


The Conformity Conspiracy

by shrink



Category: South Park
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-08
Updated: 2013-11-30
Packaged: 2017-12-07 20:35:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 71,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/752832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shrink/pseuds/shrink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tired of Ethan acting like he’s more goth than the rest of them, Henrietta and Dylan form a plan get him to commit the ultimate goth sin: falling in love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Now that the goth kids have canon names, I do plan on going back and replacing them. But until I'm able to do that, please remember that...
> 
> Ethan=Michael  
> Dylan=Pete  
> Georige=Ferkle

_Imagine the house is on fire and I reach to save one thing—what is it? Do you know? Imagine that I am drowning and I reach within myself to save that one memory which is me—what is it? Do you know? What things would either of us reach for? Neither of us know. After all these years we just wouldn't know._

_—Douglas Coupland_

**x.**

I lay back against Henrietta’s bed, as she passed me what was left of the joint we were sharing. The school days felt longer now that I actually sat through classes and it was good to retreat here afterwards. It was one more grade I had to pass until I was done. In terms of Park County Public School requirements that just meant just showing up. Not that I think graduating really matters, but Ethan said it did when I offered to drop-out so I could work full-time. He graduated last year and moved into an apartment at the edge of town. Meanwhile, my bedroom feels smaller every time I go back to it, and I have to break up the nights by going for frozen-faced walks through my neighborhood to maintain a baseline of sanity.  

It’s no secret that Ethan was sticking around South Park for the band. Because our band _is_ going to be successful. We’ve already played at two of the biggest venues in Denver. A promoter had told us it was just a matter of getting our demo out there. Which is hard without money to record more than two tracks professionally. That was why I’d taken a job at Harbucks, an endless source of amusement for Henrietta, whose favorite term for me; ‘coffee whore’, seemed less playful the fiftieth time she said it than the first. At least the uniform was all black.

Ethan worked at a record store outside of Denver, meaning that between the drive and the way our shifts conflicted, we didn’t see much of one another outside of band practice. Which was OK, if it meant that in the end we’d all get to stay together and not be separated by the colander of adulthood. Anyway he’d bring obscure records home with him sometimes, playing the same track over and over again on Henrietta’s CD player. The song would cycle through my head at I sat in classes, guessing at the lyrics I’d misheard or forgotten as the day wore on.

I took a final hit before stubbing the blunt out in the dragon ashtray Ethan made fun of Henrietta for owning. She maintained that her mom had bought it for her. But I had watched her buy the thing at the Renaissance Faire two years ago while Georgie and Ethan were in line for coffee. Still, it was one of those things where it was funnier to listen to the bickering than to set the record straight.

“I miss Georgie,” Henrietta said, breaking the silence. She looked like a mermaid who had washed ashore, her black dress bunched around her legs as she lay on the floor of her room.

“He’ll be at band rehearsal tomorrow,” I mumbled into her comforter. Band practice felt more like a prayer for togetherness sometimes than a scheduled date on a calendar.

“With his little nerd boyfriend,” she said. “Conformists.”

"Total conformists," I echoed quietly, bouncing my leg against the bed.

We’d found Georgie and Ike Broflovski making out after a show two weeks ago. Georgie had seemed relieved when Ethan had rolled his eyes and said nothing. Henrietta and I shrugged and Georgie seemed to take their silence on the issue as an excused absence from our typical hang-outs at Benny’s. I liked to think that it didn’t matter. But it was just another reminder of the way time could slash the relationship the four of us had. If it wasn’t school, or jobs, it was relationships tugging us apart. I tried not to think about it now. Now was supposed to be the time I didn’t think at all. I wish I hadn’t stubbed out the joint so soon; I probably could have sucked another hit out of it.

The door to Henrietta’s room opened, making us both turn our heads to face whatever persecution Henrietta’s mom had in mind. We knew she could smell the pot; it was just a matter of deciding if it was worth the lecture. But it wasn’t her mom; it was Ethan standing in the doorway, his curls still holding melting snow, making him much less intimidating than I imagined he wanted to appear.

“Jesus Christ—again?” he asked dully, waving his hand through the gray smoke. And he was suddenly intimidating again, probably the way his eyes went directly from the open baggie on the floor to my prone form on the bed. I focused on his ankles, blocking out the light from the hallway and tried to will them to walk back out. I’d rather not see him than have him checking my pupils every five minutes to see if they'd shrunk yet and I was worth talking to again.

“Shut the fucking door, do you want my mom to smell it?”

“Did you get out of work early?” I asked, trying to defuse whatever argument was about to begin.

“And then what? She’ll praise your experimental open-mindedness?” Ethan said to Henrietta, ignoring me.

Henrietta rolled her eyes as he shut the door anyway. “Yeah because you know everything Ethan."

I could feel the bed dip down when he sat on the edge of it. His hair was longer than it was the last time I saw him, hanging in wavy clusters over his ears.

“We were just talking about what a little conformist Georgie has turned out to be,” Henrietta said, lighting a cigarette with the nearest Zippo.

“Do you really think you’re the best judge of that?” Ethan replied. Sometimes I wondered if he pissed her off on purpose.

“What is that supposed to mean dickface?”

“Teenagers—smoking pot? It just seems like a lazy stereotype.” Ethan said, tugging on his earring seemingly out of boredom.

I stared at my bangs splayed out in front of me on the comforter. It was a lot like being at my house when my mom and step-dad were arguing. Maybe Ethan would marry Henrietta, isn’t that how this sort of thing worked? I put covered my mouth to stifle my laughter at the idea, but from Henrietta's glaring, I wasn't doing that good of a job.

“Pot is _illegal_ ass-face,” she said after a long exhale.

“About as illegal as jay-walking,” Ethan said.

“You just need a hit,” I mumbled poking Ethan with the tip of my creeper. He turned his head and gave me a look that made me feel startlingly less high and I felt bad for touching him at all. I curled my legs up closer to myself and pretended like it hadn’t happened.

Henrietta put out her cigarette and reached for the rest of the pack.

“You guys are like any other conformist twats in South Park when you’re stoned,” he sighed.

“Then take your pseudo-moral objections and fuck off,” Henrietta said.

I noticed Ethan hadn’t unbuttoned his coat at all, and wondered if he’d been expecting this scenario. I wished I wasn’t stoned. But it wasn’t something that wishing could undo. Anyway, I thought he worked. I tried to remember if I had explained that to him. But I could only stare at where the red met the black in my bangs until I heard the door to Henrietta’s room open and shut again. And Ethan was gone.

Henrietta lit her next cigarette and opened the window of her room a bit more, pacing as she did so. “He’s such a fucking dick!” she said, stomping with unnecessary force. 

“Mmm,” I agreed, wishing I could block out the shrill indignant tone her voice was taking. 

“I’m sick of it,” she said, sucking at the end of her cigarette holder. “Ethan…acting like he’s above it all, like he’s more of a goth than us.”

I thought about it for a few minutes, and I decided it was probably true though. Maybe he was above it all. Maybe he was more goth than us. I worked at a corporate coffee chain and he worked at an independent record store. That was just one example. “He is really goth,” I said out loud, not because I thought it was what she wanted to hear, but because I couldn’t deny it.

“We’re really goth,” she paused, licking the corner of her mouth where her purple lipstick was running into the edge of her white cover-up, “I’m really goth.”

“But Ethan always knows the  _most_  unconformist thing to do—like that time he joined Stan Marsh’s Dance Team.” I hadn't seen him for the week he was on the team. It was so completely miserable that I hadn't been able to read the poetry I’d written about it aloud.

Henrietta watched the ash collect on the end of her cigarette. “You’re just saying that because he’s a man.” 

“I’m a man,” I said, pushing my bangs behind his ear. They were immediately back in my face. It wasn’t my fault that Ethan was taller than me. Maybe there was some puberty sign-up sheet I’d missed where I had to select not wanting to look like an effeminate art student who looked best in skinny jeans and eyeliner.

“ _Please_ ,” she said, waving her cigarette holder at me dismissively. I tried not to feel like it was unjust. She pursed her lips and stared at the door, like it was betraying her by being the last thing Ethan touched in her room. “Given the opportunity—Ethan would do the _most_ conformist thing of any of us.”

“He turned down the pot,” I replied, wondering where this particular mood was going to take her.

“Not that. I’m talking the ultimate goth sin. Isn’t that what he said about Georgie and Ike?”

I dead-panned, “he’s not going to date Ike,” and raised my eyebrows in the international symbol for a joke.

Henrietta didn't get it. She sighed with annoyance before beginning again slowly. “I mean fall in love at all. And proving it in some grand gesture.”

“It’s not going to happen,” I said through a yawn. “You’re too stoned to realize that Ethan couldn’t fall in love. I don’t think he’s capable.” Only after I said it out loud did I realize that it was a hurtful thing to say about someone. But still, I couldn’t help but think that it was a little true, or maybe even that it was mostly true.

“I’m serious Dylan, I’m fucking sick of it,” she said, studying me with a frown. “Anyway,” she began again. “It’ll be good for him, know you? He needs to realize that he doesn’t have to be some living idol to us.”

I considered the idea while I scraped the black nail polish off my thumbnail with my teeth. Did Ethan think had had to be a living idol, was that really what this was all about? I guess I had always looked up to him in some ways when we were growing up. But hadn’t that leveled out over the years? Or had I forced him into this position?  Henrietta was still staring at me, and I realized she was waiting for me to accept this idea as some sort of stroke of genius on her part. “Who are we going to get him to fall in love with?” I asked because it seemed like an insurmountable obstacle to her plan.

Henrietta stared at me blankly in a way that seemed like she was waiting for me to laugh. “What?” I asked, feeling uncomfortable.

She raised her eyebrows and turned away from me. “One of us obviously,” she said simply.

“Which one?”

“It doesn’t matter, we’ll try both,” she said.

“How do we know he’ll pick one of us?” I wondered if I was entertaining the idea because I was high or because Henrietta seemed so sure of it. But mostly it felt like the B plot to a very tacky movie.

“Because…because he’s so desperately lonely,” she said, flicking her extensions over her shoulder. “Or whatever—don’t worry about that.”

I shrugged, “and then what?”

“Then have him date one of us until he falls in love. We’ll figure the rest out later,” she said, waving her hand at me like I’d just asked twenty frivolous questions instead of one or two practical ones.

“It might be good for him to be taken down a peg,” I said, sort of believing it. Ethan did tend to let his own self-image get in the way of him enjoying himself. Normally I would consider it a good thing, but lately it seemed he preferred slipping out of our band practices while I was still packing up my guitar.  I stared at the glossy tape holding Henrietta’s _Skinny Puppy_ poster to the wall and picked at the edge of it, remembering walking home with my guitar strapped to my back last rehearsal after Ethan had driven away.

“So you’re in,” Henrietta said, and I felt like we’d just formed some conspiracy to commit murder. “This is going to be sick.”

“So wait, what’s going on?” I asked, realizing I wasn’t listening. I wondered if I missed the part where she suggested we cut open our palms and seal the plan in blood or something.

“First we have to have him pick between us so we know who will be the bait,” she continued.

“How?” I imagined a scenario where both of us showed up at Ethan’s apartment with a bouquet of roses and forcing him to choose like some bad reality show.

Henrietta leaned back against the bed, sucking thoughtfully at her cigarette holder. “I’ll call him back over to watch a movie later,” she said.  “About an hour into it, you text him to come get coffee with you. If he stays with me—then I’ll be the bait---if he leaves to hang out with you---then you’re the bait.”

“Alright,” I said, agreeing mostly to keep her from shrilly persuading me further. I didn’t like the way she was throwing around the word ‘bait.’ I closed my eyes and imagined myself hanging from a hook, squirming through the air as Ethan decided if I was tempting enough.

 

**xx.**

I stared down at the text I’d just sent to Ethan: _bennys? now?_

It felt like an obvious trap Ethan would immediately see through somehow. Maybe it was the excessive question mark. Henrietta had called an hour ago to say that Ethan was on his way over to her house to watch a movie and to send the text in 45 minutes.

I waited a painful minute for a reply, wondering if it really would mean anything if he left Henrietta to come here to be with me. I put the phone down on the table, and then picked it up again to make sure it wasn’t on silent. It felt like Ethan’s lack of response was slowing down the rest of the world. Across the diner, I watched an old man who was filling out a newspaper crossword. His pen hadn’t moved in ten seconds, and I wondered frantically if the world had actually frozen.

Then the phone vibrated, shaking the creamer bowl next to it and breaking my focus. _10 minutes_ , was all the text from Ethan said. 

A minute later Henrietta called me. “He’s yours,” she said, I could hear her exhale over the line. “We were watching a movie and as soon as you texted he made up some excuse about needing to leave.”

“Maybe he just thought the movie was shit,” I said, glancing nervously up at the door as if talking about him was going to make him arrive instantly.

“No Dylan, he likes you more—you have to be the bait,” she said. I wondered if she’d known it’d work out like this all along.

“What movie was it?” I asked, dragging a pink sugar packet across the table with my pointer finger.

“Just accept it. Anyway, act normal, all we needed to do today was find out who he preferred. We’ll meet tomorrow afterschool to plan our first course of action,” she said.

“Whatever.” I hung up. I tried not to think about what those actions might be, knowing how persuasive Henrietta could be.

For a minute I felt like an actor who’d forgotten my lines, staring blankly across the diner, waiting for Ethan to arrive and realize that this was all some sort of set up. The new implications of Ethan preferring my company put a strange pressure on an otherwise typical hang out.  But my messenger bag hit my leg when I moved, and I remembered I’d brought along my English homework.  I tried to focus on the book in front of me, but little details seemed to vie for my attention like the fraying striped cardigan I was wearing. I tugged where it had gotten bunched up and wished I’d worn my solid black one instead.

When Ethan finally arrived, I way halfway through the fifth chapter of _Brave New World_. He slid into the booth across from me, his cheeks pink from the cold. His car probably didn’t have time to warm up on the drive from Henrietta’s house to here.

“Hey,” he said, unraveling the scarf he had wrapped up to his chin.  

“Hey.” I looked back at my book. I felt like I was doing a really bad impersonation of myself, and wondered if that’s why Ethan was still staring at me.

“I’m sorry about earlier,” he said, “it’s just—I can’t talk to you when you’re like that.”

I took a sip of the coffee the waitress had finally decided to refill now that Ethan was present. There was something commanding about his presence that there wasn’t about mine. It was something I’d observed over time and gotten used to.

“No, you were right. It’s stupid. But it does make things seem better for a little. I guess that’s why people do it,” I said, watching Ethan’s fingers tap against an open notebook page.

“I miss when you used to write poetry for that same reason.” 

“Yeah,” I laughed like I thought it was a joke, but knew it wasn’t. He wouldn’t joke about poetry, or drugs, or me. I took a sip of my too hot coffee and let it burn its way down my throat. Maybe if the caffeine didn’t work, the pain would be enough to jar me out of laughing like a moron.  

“The reason I came to Henrietta’s was because I have new lyrics for that music you recorded,” he said, sliding his notebook across the table. It’d been the easiest way to get new songs lately; I would record myself playing the music I’d written and send him the mp3.

“It’ll be good to hear this come together tomorrow at practice,” I said, flipping my bangs away from my eyes. I’d stopped trying to interpret Ethan’s lyrics years ago.

“I thought you could add a bridge here.” Ethan pointed at the messy sheet music I had hand written during a study hall. I used the pencil he handed me to make a note.

“Yeah, that’ll work,” I said.

Ethan nodded, “Do you think Henrietta is still pissed at me from earlier?”

I looked back at my coffee and thought about lying. But it felt wasteful to lie about something so small when I might be lying about bigger things soon, so I said, “maybe—why?”

“I don’t know—she invited me over to watch _Spirited Away_ with her. I got this weird-ass vibe off of her the whole time. Like she’d won something.”

I laughed nervously, “Weird.”

Ethan rolled his eyes, “Yeah.”

I shrugged and turned back to my homework. I tried to focus as Ethan scribbled something out with his pen. I wondered how Henrietta expected any of this to work—making Ethan fall in love with me. We’d always been friends, or at the very least—people who could stand one another’s company. Ethan was good at booking gigs at shady venues in Denver and I was good at kicking Mike Makowski  and his cronies out of the cemetery. Maybe Henrietta really was a witch, I considered, biting the insides of my cheeks. Maybe she had a love potion she was brewing this very minute. If not, then it probably would be easier to convince Ethan to smoke pot, I thought, glancing up at him, than to have him feel any emotion---especially love, especially for me. 


	2. Chapter 2

_The shortest distance between two points is often unbearable._

_― Charles Bukowski_

**x.**

Henrietta passed me the cigarettes as we sat at the red light. I didn’t want one at the moment, but smoking after school was a ritual now, a reward whether I wanted it or not.

“So here’s what we’re going to do,” she said, using her palm to shut off the Bauhaus CD I’d put in. We’d gone the whole day without talking about Ethan and I thought she might have forgotten yesterday’s conversation. But she seemed to only ever forget things that benefitted her, like who had paid for the weed last time.

“After practice Georgie and Ike will leave, and while you’re packing up I’m going to make up an excuse to leave. My parents and my aunt left this morning to vacation from their middle-class troubles at their middle-class cabin in the woods. So you and Ethan will have to stay and watch Bradley and my little cousin.”

“Why are we doing this again?”

“Pay attention Dylan; we’re solving Ethan’s superiority complex, it’s the closest you or I will ever get to community service.” She parked against the curb outside of her house. “You’re going to put a movie in. After about 15 minutes into it, put your head on his shoulder. That’s it.”

“And what do I do when he shrugs me off?” I imagined Ethan blowing smoke in my face as he raised his eyebrows in a look that would communicate how naïve and deluded I was.

She tugged her oversized sunglasses down her nose.

“Look, that’s not going to happen. You can pretend you fell asleep. It’s completely innocent.”

“Then what will it prove?” I stared at my warped reflection in her sunglasses.

“That he’s open to the idea of you touching him,” she said like the answer was so obvious it was written across her windshield.

"There's a difference between being open to the idea of touching and being in love. It doesn't prove anything." I gnawed on the corner of my thumb.

"That's what the next step is for, retard—we have to start out small. And if you fell asleep on my shoulder I would shove you off. It proves something."

“Fine, whatever.”

I retrieved my guitar from the backseat of her car and walked towards the garage. It always smelled like a mixture of potting soil and motor oil and felt at least 20 degrees colder than the outside. I pulled my cardigan tighter and waved at Georgie and Ike. They were both sitting on the floor propped against the wall. Ike had a forgotten Trigonometry book balanced against his knees.

“Hey Ethan,” Henrietta said, dragging her keyboard into place. I turned a peg trying to get my b string to tune.

Ethan was carrying a coffee cup with him, sipping at it as he paged through his notebook. Sometimes I wondered how he spent the days he wasn’t at work and we were at school. Did he sit at coffeehouses all day without us, free of social obligations? Did he love it?

“I thought we’d play through the set list for the show this weekend,” he said, passing us copies of it. Our show was at a venue outside of Denver. It wasn’t a big deal, but it paid better than most places.

“Um, thanks for consulting us on this,” Henrietta said, frowning at the sheet of paper he handed her.

“Why it is again that I would consult the keyboardist?”

“ _Oh_ I’d forgotten that you’d been elected fuhrer of the band.” She stubbed out her cigarette on the set list. I hated when they argued like this. It made me feel less like a musician and more like a teenager in a garage band—which was probably more accurate way to feel all along, but it shouldn’t have to be.

“What do you have a problem with?” he asked, as if with immense patience, standing over her shoulder as she read through the order.

“I just think this song should be before this one. It’s supposed to be the big finish, right?”

“Fine,” Ethan said, though it was obvious he thought it was a huge mistake.

The rest of band practice was uneventful. We ran through the set. I was pleased with how well we all sounded. It was harder for me to find time to practice at home now that my step-dad worked day-shifts. Even with my acoustic guitar he could hear me through the walls, and between school and work, 10PM was the only time I had to practice.  It wasn't that noticeable in the group, but I could have been better.

“So we’re meeting at the club at 9 to set up on Saturday?” Georgie asked, as Ike stood at his side.

“Yeah,” Ethan said. “We’ll go on at 10, the promoter said we have a 30 minute set—which isn’t as long as we’re used to, but it’s a good time slot. Most people won’t be drunk yet.”

“See you guys then,” Georgie said, reaching out to grab Ike’s hand.

“Oh shit,” Henrietta said suddenly, looking down at her cellphone. “I completely forgot to stop by my aunt’s house to let her dogs out. She’s on vacation with my parents in the mountains. Can you guys hang out for a little while I run over there? Bradley is home, but I can’t leave him here alone with my little cousin, he’s completely incompetent.”

I’d almost forgotten this was happening.

“Since when do you care?” Ethan asked.

“Since my parents so graciously let us use their garage to store all our musical instruments and let us practice here, asshole. I figure it’s probably not the best idea to piss them off.”

“It’s fine, I can stay,” I said, trying to sound casual. I always thought I’d like acting. But it felt like I was reading my script off Henrietta’s forehead.

“Okay, see you later then,” Ethan said, frowning at me while Henrietta grabbed her car keys.

“Ugh Ethan, don’t leave Dylan here all alone, I’ll feel like a bigger dick than I already do,” Henrietta said, looking incredibly sincere. It was probably too sincere.

He looked unsure, and she gave me a pointed look from behind his back.

“Yeah, don’t leave me alone with Bradley.” I was looking down at my guitar, like maybe I hadn’t actually said anything.

Ethan sighed; I could hear the eye roll in his voice. “Hurry back Henrietta, this is supposed to be band practice not babysitter’s club.”

We walked into the house. “It is really good that her parents let us use the garage.” I felt the need to assure Ethan in some way and maybe convince him that Henrietta's parents might have followed through with the obviously imagined threat. “We couldn’t afford to rent a rehearsal space.”

He nodded, sitting at the edge of the sofa.

“Where’s my sister?” Bradley was standing in the doorway of the kitchen. He had to be in high school now but seemed like an overgrown baby. Maybe it was the slightly vacant expression across his face, and the way his blonde hair was unbrushed. Henrietta liked to theorize that her parents knew they’d fucked up with her and were holding onto Bradley’s childhood as long as they could. I bet his mom still brushed his hair in the morning.

“She had to go to your aunt’s house,” I said, resisting the urge to shoo him away like a dog.

“Did she make us dinner at least?”

I almost laughed at the idea that Henrietta ever made this kid dinner, but he was looking at me like I was hiding his Hamburger Helper behind my back.

“Um, no?” I said.

“Will you?”

I looked over at Ethan who shrugged. “He’s not asking me.”

“O-K, what do you want?” I asked, beginning to suspect that Henrietta had planned this whole thing as a way to get out of babysitting.

“Me and Teddy want mac and cheese.” Bradley even talked with one of those weird lisps that only sound cute coming from third graders.

I stood up and walked to the cupboard, pulling out a box of SpongeBob shaped macaroni and cheese.

“You just boil water you know,” I said as the blonde pulled two juice boxes from the fridge.

“Tell me when it’s done,” he said, walking to his room where I could hear the dulcet tones of zombies or some shit getting their heads hacked off. Something about the mindlessness of the sound effects made me glad I’d spent my childhood sharing bad poetry with my friends. No matter how quickly we’d all run out us words that rhymed with “pain” on a Sunday afternoon, it seemed better somehow. Sometimes I wondered how it was possible that I existed in the same world with people who didn’t persistently smell like hair dye and coffee.

“Do you want coffee or something?” I asked Ethan who had pulled a magazine out of his bag.

He looked over at me from the top of it and shrugged. I poured the shitty store-brand Henrietta’s parents must have had a coupon for into the filter of the Mr. Coffee and waited.

My cellphone vibrated against my leg from a text Henrietta had sent; “ _let me know when you do it and I’ll come back_.” I imagined her sitting at Benny’s eating a giant plate of cheesy French fries as I made her kid brother and cousin their own carb and nuclear waste covered meal.

I poured myself a cup of coffee and stared down at the water on the stove.

“Do you want to watch a movie or something?” I felt like it was probably best to move this along.

Ethan looked up. “Yeah that’s fine.”

I went into Henrietta’s room and pulled her copy of _Labyrinth_ off the shelf and tossed it to him. While he messed with the DVD player I mixed the powdery cheese into the noodles.

“Bradley!” I said, sitting two bowls on the counter. He came in and grabbed them, and returned to his room.

“Do you want the rest?” I asked Ethan as I stabbed at the gooey noodles with a spoon.

“Okay,” he said. I handed him the bowl as I sat next to him on the sofa. Now that he lived alone, I couldn’t imagine that he ate any better than before. I tried to picture him walking through a grocery store with his trench coat and combat boots, but it felt too fantastical.

“So you’re like, a really good mommy.” He blew across the surface of the congealing cheese.

“It’s made with extra indifference.” I slouched against the sofa feeling like I was too close from the moment I sat down. I leaned back against the sofa, almost pointedly as the opening credits played.

 It was hard to know how close I’d have to sit to put my head on his shoulder. It felt less like a romantic gesture and more like geometry class. Why did it always look so effortless in movies? Right now leaping thirty feet across the roof of a building seemed like it would be an easier feat than tilting my head the three inches needed to meet Ethan’s shoulder.

“David Bowie is such a tool,” he said, startling me.

“Yeah.” I agreed quickly, realizing for the first time that I was supposed to be watching a movie.

“You weren’t upset about me making the set list without consulting you, were you?”

“I like when you do things like that,” I said. “It makes me feel like I’m not the only one that cares so much, you know?”

“Yeah, I know.”

He finished off the noodles and got up to take the bowl to the sink. When he came back he sat further away from me. I felt strangely unwanted, but also a bit like I’d been challenged. I looked over at him out of the corner of my eye, as he sipped on a mug of coffee he’d poured. In my head, Henrietta was calling me a pussy, and I decided that I should probably stop hanging out with her so much.

I leaned my head back against the sofa, and slowly closed my eyes, tilting my head against my own shoulder. The only way to get through this was to imagine there was an audience across the room holding their breath in anticipation. I waited a few minutes with my eyes closed, listening as David Bowie talked. _I’m asleep_ , I thought. _I’m not accountable for what I’m doing._ I slowly forced myself over, so my cheek was pressed lightly against his shoulder. Ethan’s muscles tensed under me, and I shut my eyes tighter, as if that would prove how extra unaware I was of what I was doing.

I waited for him to shake me awake, or maybe move away entirely. But he just stayed there, tense and inhaling just a bit too quick. I opened my eyes slightly to see his fingers clutching painfully at the coffee mug resting against his thigh. I almost felt bad enough to laugh at myself, or move. But it was easier to stay like this now.

And after a few minutes, it didn’t feel strange anymore. I could smell the mixture of cigarettes and coffee that purely Ethan, and reminded me of riding in his car to school all those mornings last year and the year before. When we still hung out outside of band practice. When he still lived with his Mom I would walk the three blocks that separated our houses and see if he wanted to kill 2AM with a smoke in the cemetery. He would come out of his front door, still warm with sleep, messing with the laces of his boots on his porch. I guess I could still walk to the cemetery at night now without him, but I don’t.

“Hey,” he said, touching my arm. I opened my eyes to see the credits rolling. “Wake up, you missed the ending.”

“I’ve seen it before,” I yawned and sat up, surprised I'd actually fallen asleep. I pushed my bangs away from my eyes. His hand was still barely touching the side of my elbow. I kept looking straight ahead, not wanting him to know that I was aware of it. 

“I think Henrietta fucked us over,” he said. And I looked out the window at the dark.

“I’ll call her,” I said, not particularly wanting to get up. But I felt like I had to commit to some level of nonchalance. I retrieved my phone from the kitchen and dialed her number.

“Did you do it?” she asked.

“Yeah. Are you on your way back?” I felt guilty talking about it with Ethan still in the room, and moved dirty macaroni pot from the stove to the sink. He poked me in the arm and I turned around. He was pointing at the door.

“I’m just at Benny’s, give me five minutes,” she said. I put my finger up for Ethan to wait a second but he was already leaving.

“Okay,” I said, hanging up.

Why had he left like that. Had he just been waiting for the moment that I wasn’t pressing him down like an overgrown paperweight? Outside I could hear him start his car. And suddenly everything made me feel claustrophobic; the store-brand coffee, the case of _Labyrinth_ lying opened on the floor, even my own chipping nail polish.

The magazine Ethan had been reading earlier was still sitting on the coffee table. I thought about texting him to come back and get it. Instead, I grabbed it, trying to remember where he had held it, but it wasn't Ethan's. It was last month's Mojo with Robert Smith on the cover that Henrietta picked up two weeks ago when we’d been at Barnes and Noble. 

I leaned back against the cushions and wondered if Henrietta meant five minutes until she left Benny's or five minutes until she got here.  I stood up and picked my coat off of an armchair. Either way I wasn't hanging around to detail the entire non-event to her. I closed the door softly on my way out.

 


	3. Chapter 3

_He was pointing at the moon, but I was looking at his hand._

_-Richard Siken_

**x.**

I stood outside the venue smoking. Inside the shitty screamo band that the crowd was here to see was still playing. They were called Blood Redemption which looked stupid on the flyer next to our more subdued band name; The Belladonnas. I watched people buying tickets at the door, trying to pick out which ones were here to see us and which ones were here to get drunk on the $4 Mojitos.

“Conformists,” Henrietta said, leaning against the wall next to me. We watched as bouncers drew x’s on the hands of underage kids, none of which were from our high school. They were at home recovering from the glory that was Friday night football. When we were in middle school we’d sit under the bleachers during games, spiking the coffee we’d buy from the band moms who ran the concession stand. Back then it’d been enough to silently break school rules.

I’d come outside to avoid the inevitable formation of a mosh pit with the first guttural shriek of the singer. Ethan and I used to debate whether or not people actually liked music like this, or just pretended to so they could belong to some niche group of slackers. I kicked at some of the dirty frost against the cement, trying to focus less on the pulsating walls behind me and more on the ways in which this weekend was different than back in middle school. We were actually doing something; we were trying to be something.

“So here’s the plan for tonight.”

“I’ve already told you that I’m not doing anything else.” I didn’t want to think about stupid ideas dreamed up while we were stoned. Not at a show.

“Yeah three days ago, I thought you would stop being such a child about it.”

“If you’re so concerned—get Ethan to fall in love with you.” I stubbed my cigarette under my creeper.

“Come on Dylan,” she said, playing with the edge of my shirt. “Hear me out.”

“No.” I turned and walked back inside. The music vibrated against my skin, and I was glad now. It tangled my thoughts apart. People on the edges of the most pit shoved against me, as I tried to make my way through the crowd. But no matter how many bodies I put between us, Henrietta was behind me, grabbing at my arm.  

“Seriously Henrietta, I’m not doing anything,” I yelled over the music. The people around us turned their heads in our direction.

“Mind your own business assholes,” I said under my breath.  

“I don’t understand why you won’t even listen to what I have to say.”

How could I explain to her that the last three days all I could see when I closed my eyes was Ethan shutting the front door to her house.

“Because it’s not going to happen!”

She looked especially unimpressed by my decision in general. It made me want to do something crazy and out of character, but yelling was the closest I could get to being out of hand and I was already doing that.

“What’s going on?” Ethan said, standing between us. His collared shirt stopped directly under his Adam’s apple, and I took a step away from him.

“Nothing, I’m  _trying_  to set up!” I said to him like he had been stopping me. I turned and continued towards the stage. When I got there Georgie and Ike were already hauling our equipment on as Blood Redemption cleared out. I liked Ike more when I thought of him as a roadie.

“Your amp is set up, dude,” Ike said, immediately making me dislike him again. I looked over at Georgie as if he was solely responsible for me being called “dude.” But he was laughing and tugging Ike away from me. I strummed a few chords on my Gibson, trying not to think about how I could see Georgie sucking on Ike’s neck out of the corner of my eye.

Henrietta and Ethan were on the stage now. It was easy not to have to look at them when I had a free pass to stare at my fingers for the next half an hour. I pulled the set list from my pocket and placed it on my amp. For all of Henrietta's complaints, the set list was good for the little amount of time we had. Sometimes it seemed like she and Ethan fought out of habit rather than actual issues, no matter what Henrietta said. I put my foot up on my amp in what I hoped was a strong look. Ethan grabbed the microphone.

“Hello you little posers,” he said with his typical sneer. A few people turned towards us speculatively, and I launched into the opening chords of the first song he’d picked. Already people who had been waiting to see if we were going to play something hardcore were dispersing. Good. 

Under the flashing lights we were all either green or red or blue at the same time. There was something comforting in the idea. I felt a trail of sweat working its way down my spine. How anyone lived without this feeling once a week, I couldn't imagine. They were probably too blinded by their Gap credit card statement and the arrangement of letters on their vanity license plates.

I stood to the left of Ethan and faced the crowd. Every time I glanced to the right, Henrietta was shooting me an apologetic look. Ethan’s eyes were closed, and his head was tilted back as he finished another chorus. I was glad I didn’t have to look up much on either account.

The set was short; too short considering the screamo fags had been on stage for at least forty-five minutes after we’d gotten here. But as long as our name was in tiny print at the bottom of the venue's official preview poster there would always be mismatched crowds.

After the set, Ethan talking was talking with the promoter at a small table to the side of the stage I wondered when he developed the people skills that he’d always lacked with parents and teachers.

“I’m sorry,” Henrietta stood over me as I zipped my guitar into its case. “I was being a psycho bitch, I get it.”

“No, it’s fine; I just don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

She handed me a drink. “A peace offering?”

I looked speculatively at the red mixed drink and took a sip. “Tastes girly.”

“That’s because it’s for my best girl,” she said, hooking our arms together as she helped me up. I could feel her nails digging into my skin.

“We have to load our instruments,” I said, looking back at the stage we were walking away from. We typically loaded everything into Henrietta’s car; it was easier to get it back to the garage that way.

“Let Ike and Georgie do it. Think of it as a happiness-tax for them.” She led us to the second level of the club where throngs of people were sitting around little tables, shouting conversations over the music.

 “How do you think the show went?” she asked, as we slid into a booth in the corner. It was dark, and I was glad because I was still sweating from being under the stage lights.

“Good, but we need to stop playing at such small venues—you know?” I said, sipping at the drink.

“Don’t we have another show lined up in Denver next weekend?”

“Yeah,” I said, imaging the much trendier crowd. “People are always talking about record label recruiters hanging out there.”

“Do you actually think we’re ready for a record deal?”

“Absolutely.” I reached for my drink. But my hand hit it clumsily, spilling the little that remained on the table.

“It’s okay.” Henrietta was already soaking it up with a napkin.

“I feel weird,” I said, staring at my hands. It felt someone had unscrewed them and put them back on the wrong arms.

“Hold that thought—we need another round.” When I looked up from my hands she had already disappeared into the crowd. I leaned back against the wall, feeling worn out from sitting up. My bangs hung over my eyes and I flicked them away, the movement made the world shift and sway in front of me.

“Here.” Henrietta sat another red drink on the table. This one had a cherry attached to the rim of the glass.

“It’s really okay, you don’t have to get me drunk.” I laughed at the way I was slurring the words.

“What are you a twelve year old girl? I hope it takes more than two drinks, Dylan.” She was sipping delicately from the little straw in her own drink.

“Stop calling me a girl,” I mumbled, but liking her more and more the longer we sat together. I almost wished she would dare me to put my head on Ethan’s shoulder or something. I bet it would be really easy now. I drank the rest of my drink, as she frowned at me from across the table.

“Do you ever notice that people who are happy, seem to be given new things to be happier about all the time? Meanwhile for people like me and you it’s just the opposite?” she was staring down in the general direction of the crowd below.

“Yeah.”

“I was reading the other day that if there is a god he doesn’t care who is happy and who is sad—so really he doesn’t exist.”

I wondered why she was telling me any of this now. Usually she’d splice comments like that between poems, not say off-handedly. My eyes slid shut and when I opened them she was talking about something else entirely.

“So I was trying to tell Ethan that we need to cover Amanda Palmer songs. I could sing them, even though he thinks that I can’t—people really like her. And it’s not even about how well you sing with artists like that—it’s the emotion behind it.” I focused mostly on the way her lips moved to form the words. It seemed like bad dubbing.

“Ew I can see Ike and Georgie making out from up here.” She was peering over the balcony next to us. “Do you see them?” She turned away from the edge of the balcony and back to me, “Dylan?”

Her voice sounded too far away now. I wanted to hold onto it, and stay with her. I rested my head in my hands. “God I feel sick.”

“You’re just drunk.”

“Am I?” I could barely get the words out. “Can you get me water or something?” My arms dropped against the table and I laid my cheek on them.

“Yeah, I’ll be right back. Stay here.”

She was gone forever and I wondered how long the line to the bar was. Was it out the door? Was she outside? Did she go home? I tried to focus on not blacking out by picking out the guitar lines from the music throbbing over the speakers. I heard someone sitting close by ask “is that guy dead?” and I tried to push myself off the table, but I couldn’t make my arms move from under my cheek. I felt like I was made of lead, and wondered why the floor wasn’t breaking apart from my weight.

“What were two injecting shots directly into your bloodstream?” Ethan said.

“I don’t know what he had, I found him like that,” Henrietta said. I laughed into my sleeve.

“Dylan.” Ethan was sitting next to me. I liked the way he said my name. I felt his hands lifting me up, and my eyes fluttered open to take in Henrietta’s concerned face across from me before shutting again. “Are you okay?” He seemed less like a person and more like a song that I loved, saying all my favorite lines. His hands were clamped on my shoulders shaking me, “open your eyes.” He was saying my name over and over again, shaking me harder, his voice getting a little quicker and more desperate every time he said it.

I did open my eyes to look at him and wished I hadn’t. He was upset, and I was afraid for a minute that he might hit me, and I was trying to remember what I’d done wrong.

“I’m okay,” I tried to say, but it came out as a groan.

He pulled me closer to him. “Fuck,” he said. “I swear to god Henrietta if you two took something just tell me right now.”

“Because I’m the bad influence—get a grip Ethan, he’s just drunk.”

I could hear him swishing around the ice in the cup still on the table. “Was he like this when you found him?”

“More or less.”

“I’ll help put him in your car, and you can take him back to your place for tonight.”

“Fuck no,” Henrietta said, “I’m not going home yet—it’s not even 12.”

“Are you serious right now?” Ethan was rubbing my back. This was so embarrassing. But also it felt good and I leaned into him more because he was warm.

“No—you take him back to  _your_  apartment. You have no life anyway. I’m going to dance.”

“I’m not taking him back to my apartment,” Ethan said. “I’m not convinced that this isn’t your fault.”

I heard her sigh and I imagined, roll her eyes in the dramatic way she reserved for letting Ethan know how much he was annoying her. “Then I guess leave him here,” she said.

 “Don’t,” I said into his neck, fumbling to grasp at whatever part of him I could grab. Which happened to be the sides of his suspenders. But he wasn’t moving away from me anyway.

I knew she had left when he called her a “cunt” under his breath.

“Drink this water.” He was sitting me up straighter and holding a plastic cup to my mouth. I blinked, trying to clear the fuzziness away from my vision. All I could focus on was the skull and cross-bone brass ring on his finger. I wanted to tell him that I read yesterday that people wore wedding rings on their ring finger because it’s the only finger that has veins that go right to the heart. But my mouth felt thick, and it was hard enough to stay awake. I thought if blacked out, maybe he would leave me here like Henrietta said, and I gripped him tighter.

“Okay,” he said when I’d finished the water. “I’m going to help you walk out to my car; do you think you can stand up without puking on me?”

I nodded, and he pulled one of my arms around his neck, while he gripped me across my chest and half carried me through the crowd. The colored lights weren’t comforting anymore. They made everyone look like they were melting. I thought maybe we were melting too.

But it was too cold the next minute, and I was sitting in the passenger seat of his car. The air vents were blasting on us and we were already stopped under a red light.

“Don’t black out,” he was saying, “let me know if you’re going to be sick,” and “hold your head up” all at once. Or maybe over and over again. I didn’t like the strange tone in his voice. It made me feel like something was much more wrong than I felt like it could possibly be when we were together.

“Did you take something? Tell me if you did—I won’t be mad—did Henrietta give you something?”

I thought about Henrietta and how nice she’d been to me. “Drinks,” I said, dragging the ’s’ out like I wasn’t sure where the word was supposed to end.

“What were you two fighting about before the show?” he said, squeezing my arm for me to pay attention. “Dylan?”

“I’m gonna puke.” I was glad we were at a stop sign off the main road at least, and gripped for the door handle. I fell onto the frozen road, puking up what looked like blood into the day old snow. All I could think about was someone finding it in the morning and wondering if someone was hurt. I wanted them to know it had been me. Something about the whole thing made me want to cry. But I wasn’t crying; I was just trying to cry, on my hands and knees with the wind blowing the red of my hair back in my face. Ethan picked me up and put me back in the car. I did feel better now, with my stomach empty and my forehead pressing against the cool window of his car.

When we got to his apartment he pulled me out of the passenger seat and carried me inside. He placed me on his bed, and wrapped me in blankets.

“You’re cold,” he said as I tried to pry them away.

“No.” But I just had to lie there under his covers because he wasn’t listening to me anymore. He brought me a glass of water, which he made me drink and a wet towel.

“Your hands are scuffed,” he explained, holding one of them. I guess I had fallen out of his car harder than I thought. He wiped at my hands until the dried blood and dirt was gone and they were raw and pink. He put the glass down and turned out the lamp on the end table next to the bed.

I reached for him, missing him entirely, but he grabbed my wrist gingerly. “What do you need,” he said in a way that I knew I could ask for anything and he’d bring it to me. “More water?”

“Just don’t leave,” I mumbled, feeling unreasonably proud of the way I could put words together again. “You’re always going out doors.”

I thought for a minute he wasn’t going to listen to me again. I thought maybe he’d left, but when I opened my eyes he was across the room, laying his coat over a chair. He came back and lay down next to me. I reached out across the sheets until I could touch him. I clutched at the fabric of his shirt.  

“Don’t do this again,” he said into the darkness of the room. “You scare me Dylan.”

I felt like there was something more important he was saying, and maybe if I was sober I could understand. But because I couldn’t, I pulled him closer to me. I wasn’t surprised when he let me, or when he buried his face against my chest. I didn’t want to sleep. But whatever alcohol that was clamping down on my brain was finally too convincing to force back and I knew I was passing out.

**xx.**

I didn’t need to open my eyes to know that I was alone. Last night everything felt concrete like Ethan’s shirt in my hands and the cup he’d pressed against my lips. But now, staring at the sunlight edging around the black curtains my emotions were shapeless. I stared blankly across his empty bedroom and realized I was jealous of every one of his possessions. He’d probably touched that cheap lamp by the bed more times in a week than he’d touched me in the nine years we’d known one another. I pulled the covers back over my head.

There are probably worse places to realize you’re in love with someone. But wishing to suffocate under his covers now, I couldn’t think of any. I tried to tell myself something to make it stop; _there’s no such thing as love— it’s an emotion sold by Hallmark to make the rest of us feel inadequate about ourselves._ But I remembered too clearly making him stay with me, making him let me touch him, for goth mantras like that to work now. I felt like I was watching a horror movie in reverse, where shutting my eyes made the memories more vivid. So I stared at the sheet over my head. It was probably better to focus less on my thoughts and more on actions anyway — like leaving.

He must be at work by now. Whenever now was. My creepers were sitting on the floor next to the bed and I slid them on and combed my bangs over my face. I felt dizzy when I stood up, but I’d almost have to be dead to sit back on his bed now that I’d gotten out of it. I walked out of the bedroom and towards the front door.

“Where are you going?” he was sitting at the kitchen table, a mug of coffee in front of him. His hair was damp and he was wearing that Cure shirt he’d had forever. Usually he wore a button-up over top of it, so I could usually only make out the top part of Robert Smith’s hair.

I felt entirely sure that “I love you” was written all over my face. Now that I knew it, he’d know it. And I wished I would stop thinking so loud.

“Why don’t you come sit down,” he said, looking like he wanted to come help me.

“I should go.”

“I’ll drive you home when I leave for work; do you want some coffee or something to eat?”

“Coffee,” I said, sitting in the plastic seat across from him. I wondered how people did this. How did they walk around in love? Pretending things mattered, like whether or not they drank coffee.

The coffee he put in front of me was black, the way we’d both taken it since we were kids.

“How do you feel?” His fingers were playing with the hoop through his ear.

I felt like my heart was trying to crawl out of my mouth.

“Like an idiot. Like I’m such a shitty person to do that to you.” I looked down at my coffee for support.

“It happens,” Ethan shrugged. We both knew nothing like that would ever happen to him. “What did you take?”

He was asking me what drugs I’d taken, like I was some sort of high school stoner who couldn’t control myself. But if that was true, I couldn’t remember anyway. I thought about lying, because saying I couldn’t remember what it was that made me lay across a club table semi-conscious wasn’t exactly a winning answer either.

“I don’t know,” I said because it was true, “I don’t remember.”

“You feel better now though?”

“I guess, I mean—yeah.” I looked around at the various stacks of CDs sitting in piles on the table and on the counters. A lot had changed since the last time I was in this apartment. The Edvard Munch print on the wall over the sofa, for instance, that was new.

“Can I have a cigarette?”

He dug in his pocket for a second and passed me a cigarette and his lighter.

I took a long drag, waiting for the nicotine to do that magical thing that made my stomach stop feeling sour.

“So next weekend’s show is the big one.” It was nice of him to change the subject like that. We could always talk about the band—that was both the downside and upside of it.

 “Yeah. I’m bone-crushingly nervous. There’s going to be scouts in the audience.”

“Maybe we could practice—just you and me tomorrow or something.”

“Yeah.” I sipped at the coffee. “My stepdad acts like a dick when I play in the house.”

I wondered if this was something that was really going to happen, or something that Ethan was saying to make me feel better while I looked so shitty. After we finished our coffee he grabbed a button-up and finished getting dressed.

“I didn’t have time to grab your coat last night. Sorry.” I caught the black hoodie he tossed me that he must only wear around the house because I’d never seen it before.

While we were walking to his car, I thought someone looking at us might think about the way the sleeves from the hoodie came over my hands and know it was his. Someone looking at us might think we do things like this all the time. But we were the only ones around. And we both knew that we didn’t. 

 


	4. Chapter 4

_He seemed to be waiting for me to move forward. Weren’t we all._

_-Miranda July_

**x.**

Work was hell on Sunday night. I felt queasy all day, and the smell of steamed milk that had permeated the collar of my shirt wasn’t helping. I tugged Ethan’s hoodie around me as I stood on the curb outside after work, smoking as I watched Henrietta pulling into the parking lot.

“There’s my favorite coffee whore,” she said, as I slid into the seat next to her. “Benny’s?”

“I just want to go to bed. I feel like shit.” I tugged my hat flattened hair away from my eyes.

“Okay then, I’ll drive slow so you can tell me everything.”

I wondered if Ethan had called her. Called her to tell her about how I’d made him lay in bed with me. How I wouldn’t let him go. I felt my chest tighten at the thought and tried to remember that they were both my friends and not people who would laugh at me like that.

“I think someone fucking roofied me last night,” I said, deciding to start with something that wasn’t my fault.

“Close. GHB.”

“What?” I turned to her as she switched to the next song on the CD player.

“I had to. You were going to bitch out.”

I waited a minute for the comment to process. Looking for a way that I was misinterpreting what she was saying. But it was clear no matter how I turned it over.

“You drugged me?”

“Just a _little_ bit.” She turned the volume on the song down. “You should have seen the way Ethan was looking at you though. I almost thought he had a soul.”

“Are you joking right now? Do you have any idea how stupid you made me look?”

“Stupid? No, Ethan loved it. _Oh put your head on my shoulder Dylan, oh let me carry you Dylan, oh let me suck your dick Dylan._ ”

“No, you’re wrong. You _drugged_ _me_ and then tried to _leave me_ there, and he had to make sure I didn’t die.”

“Please, I knew he’d take care of you. That was the plan all along.”

“The plan!?” I felt like I could strangle her with her own hair extensions. “He’s never going to love me Henrietta! Don’t you get it?!”

“Come on Dylan,” she rolled her eyes, “I can’t believe I have to tell you. I thought you must have known. Until last week when you got all slack-jawed at the idea that he could ever choose you over me. Ethan loves you already. Have you seen those faggy pointy-toes boots he wears?” She shook her head.

I wanted to think this was an elaborate joke she was playing. But I knew it wasn’t. Not after she’d just admitted to drugging me.

“But you know now. The thing is—he’s never going to act on it. He somehow thinks you aren’t gay, or don’t want him, or something. And he’s resigned himself to being this broody little bitch about it. And I’m tired of being an audience to his misery when I know you like him too. So do something about it, because he never will.”

“What makes you so convinced that I like him back?” I asked, almost not wanting to hear the answer as she pulled into my driveway.

 She laughed a little into her cigarette, before turning to me again. “Just off the top of my head, you’re wearing his hoodie right now like you’re his freshman girlfriend.”

“Fuck you.” I slammed the door of her car as I walked inside.

I flung my Harbucks apron against the hamper in my room and tried to balance all the information at once, but if felt like it was toppling off of my shoulders. So I lay back against my bed and lit a cigarette and tried to think about what Henrietta had done. But I couldn’t even maintain any anger at her, because what she said about Ethan eclipsed everything else. Unfairly maybe, and probably purposefully.  

“I thought I smelled smoke.” My step-dad stood in the doorway. “Put it out or get out.”

I took one long drag of it before smashing it against the lid of a Harbucks cup sitting on my dresser. He watched, unimpressed.

“And you can come in quieter next time; it’s 10:30 at night.”

“Okay, _god,_ ” I said, shutting the door. Typical suburban drone, clinging to his idea of what was late and what was early based on when he had to be at his job in the morning.

But I almost wished he’d come back. I felt like an argument. I wanted something pitted against me that was wrong and I was right. Because everything had suddenly swung in a new direction and I didn’t understand when to duck to avoid being hit. At work there hadn’t been any time to obsessively churn over every detail of last night. But staring at the ceiling of my room now, without so much as a cigarette to distract me, all I had were my thoughts of Ethan.

Was Henrietta serious about how he felt? I wondered how oblivious I’d been and for how long; of my own feelings—of his possible feelings. What could she always see that I never had? And how long did she know that I felt the same way? And if she knew, why didn’t Ethan know. Maybe he did. I scrubbed my face in my hands. I wished I could just never leave my room again.

I couldn’t help but think of old memories in a new light. Last year on my 17th birthday Ethan had picked me up for school like always. When we’d driven past the high school I thought we were going to Benny’s. But he told me that one of his friends had given him two tickets they weren’t using to see AFI that night in Salt Lake City. That’s what he’d said. And I believed him for the seven hour car ride, even though I was one third of Ethan’s friends. There was no way Henrietta would have given him the tickets, or that Georgie could have afforded them. We stopped at a diner on the way and he’d insisted on paying for my French fries and coffee. Later at the concert I had leaned close and said into his ear how coincidental it all was that this happened on my birthday. I always thought it was strange how he’d looked at me so sad in that moment, like I’d done something wrong. He even bought me a band shirt that I still wear all the time. I’m so stupid.

I closed my eyes and turned towards the wall of my bedroom remember last night. Next to me my cellphone buzzed. I looked at the text: _practice tomorrow at my place? I’ll pick you up from school?_

I stared down at it, so it wasn’t a lie. He actually wanted me to come back over. I wondered if I should text back right away—or would that seem too desperate. I could barely care about that when I had so many other things to think about, and texted him back: _ok_. But now I saw how this was going to go. I had to learn how to function in the world where I had to be hyper-aware of everything I did around him, not wanting to screw up how he felt about me.

I couldn’t sleep. I tried to rehearse all the ways I wouldn’t fuck up tomorrow when I was around him. When I’d run out of ideas I occupied myself with painting my nails until they were solid black again.

 

**xx.**

I sat in on the floor of Ethan’s living room Monday afternoon with my guitar resting on my thigh. Nothing felt as strange as I thought it might, just me. He was flipping through his notebook searching for lyrics that might work for a riff I’d been working on. I kept looking for some major clue of his feelings towards me. But so far he’d smoked three cigarettes, drank one cup of coffee, and showed me the flyer Georgie had made for the show this coming weekend. There wasn’t anything significant in any of it. It was almost extra normal. I wondered what exactly I was looking for anyway. What would Henrietta look for, what was his tell?

He was sitting cross-legged, leaning back against the sofa smoking as I played. “I like that last one,” he said, “It’s more subtle than what you typically write. Very Depeche Mode of you.”

Why could we only talk about music? It felt like we were reading from a script that we couldn’t deviate from. What did we ever talk about? What did I ever say that made him love me? I’d say it again.

“What?” he asked, misinterpreting my silence. “Not what you were going for?”

“No it was, why?”

“You stopped playing.” He was looking down at my fingers, resting motionlessly against the string.

“Just thinking about how nice it must be to have your own apartment.” I don’t know why I said that. It seemed like a normal thing to be thinking.

“Yeah, it’s an improvement over finding my mom cuddling a bottle of Ambien on the kitchen floor every morning, with one L.L Bean slipper on her foot, and one in the hallway.” Ethan didn’t talk about his mom much, but when he did, it was like this. There were so many things that he never talked about which was fine. I just wished he didn’t look so goddamn dejected all of the time. But what could I do? Crawl across the carpet and kiss him? The fucked up thing was that in spite of everything I’d always thought about shallow physical affection; pathetic PDA by the water fountain between periods at school or guys with their arms wrapped around their girlfriends at concerts, is that it didn’t seem shallow or meaningless if it was between me and Ethan. But I couldn’t really be sure, because it was all in my mind, and everything always turned out better there than in the gray light of reality. I couldn’t kiss him here on the floor of his apartment. Not now, not yet.

“Remember when we were in middle school and we all decided we’d buy a house in the middle of nowhere and paint the windows black, but then Henrietta said the aesthetic for writing would be fucked so we agreed to let her put up black lace curtains?” I said. It was my go-to dream when I felt like shit, maybe it was his too.

He smirked and stretched an arm behind his head, “And we were only going to stock the kitchen with coffee and cigarettes. And we were going to spend our whole lives writing and never leave the house.  Yeah, we were lacking some fundamental understanding of capitalism then.”

“We’re fucked if the band doesn’t work. Working 40 hours a week to pay for the electric bill; wasting our lives around ordinary people, doing ordinary things.”

“We’ll be okay,” Ethan said. “With the band, without the band. Even without a faggy clubhouse.”

“Not if we grow apart.” I lit a cigarette.

The doorbell rang. I’d forgotten we’d ordered Chinese food. He looked over at me like he didn’t want to interrupt this conversation, and put up a finger as if to say _hold that thought_. He paid the delivery man, and came back carrying a plastic bag with a yellow smiley face on it. He sat back down on the floor with me. This was the closest to a picnic that we’d ever get.

“Eggroll and tofu.” He handed me the white container.

I dug a plastic fork out of the bag before sitting down.

“So—growing apart?” He picked a cluster of noodles with chopsticks, because that’s just how he was, more genuine than me in every way. Big things. Little details. I felt like shit, and stabbed my tofu with my fork.

“I don’t know,” I was sorry I brought this up. Because now he was looking at me so goddamn seriously. And I didn’t have anything serious to say. “I guess I just meant that Georgie isn’t around anymore. I mean, he and Ike seem happy. Whatever.” I shrugged.

He almost looked relieved. What did he think I was talking about? He bit the end of his chopstick. “They _think_ they’re happy.”

“Georgie always talked about how bullshit relationships are, but as soon as he’s two months into high school he’s being pressed against the bricks of the gymnasium by Ike. We’re hypocrites.”

“Jesus Christ _gross_.”

“I’m just saying.” I thought for a minute about what exactly I was saying. Nothing really. This was just me saying out loud to Ethan what I thought about every day. It was one of those things I thought about so much that hearing it now made me feel sick. I don’t want us torn apart from one another.

“Georgie deserves better.” Ethan broke the silence. “A month from now, a year from now he’s going to get hurt. But we’ll be there for him to chain smoke with when it happens.” He thoughtfully put a cigarette between his lips now and raised his eyebrow at me before adding, “Anyway, if he wanted to experiment, he should have come to me. Ike Broflovski comes with all that baggage of his bitchy brother.”

I felt a blush creep into my cheeks and looked down. So this was the big moment. Ethan was outing himself to me.

But more than that, he was confessing his love for Georgie? It felt untrue, but the more I thought about it, everything seemed to add up. He had stopped hanging out with us after Georgie started dating Ike. I guess Henrietta and I weren’t that much of a draw once Georgie wasn't around. And he never lingered after band practice when Ike was there. 

Also he'd always said Georgie was the most hardcore goth of any of us. Was that the appeal? I tried to clear my thoughts. It probably wasn’t true. But maybe.

“Yeah.” I said, like it was fine. All I could think about was bringing another forkful of tofu to my lips. Because that would mean it really was fine. So I did.

Last night in my room thinking about my 17th birthday I thought I could account for Ethan’s feelings. But now, looking at him, I could remember how feelings can change. And maybe whatever feelings he’d had for me had transferred to Georgie.

I tried to account for everything Georgie had that I didn’t. He had much worse hair, but it was longer than mine. Maybe Ethan liked that. And he was still short, but he’d get taller. Not like me. I was stuck this short. I had to rely on my one inch creepers to come to Ethan’s shoulders as it was.  Georgie had stopped wearing that gaudy black lipstick after sixth grade, which was an improvement. And he had snakebites now. I could get piercings too. Anyone could get a hole in their face. It didn’t mean anything. But, Georgie had icy blue eyes which was something I could never have. It was naturally goth. My eyes were green in a dirty pond water sort of way. God, I thought, I hoped no one ever looked at me again.

But Ethan was looking at me, maybe he hadn’t stopped. “Do you think they’re really happy? Do you have _a reason_ to think people can actually be happy in relationships?”

I didn’t understand why he was phrasing it like that. It was confrontational like he wanted me to confess something.

“You know I don’t.” I said quietly.

He shrugged and blew a cloud of smoke over his shoulder. And we sat there in what wasn’t a pleasant silence while we finished the food.

“Thanks for the Chinese,” I said, wondering if someone could possibly act awkward enough to undo a 9 year friendship in an afternoon. All I knew was that I couldn’t do this again, I had to know. If he really was in love with me or Georgie, how did he live with it? I wished I could ask him, but I guess that would have defeated the purpose.

 

**xxx.**

I sat at the diner, my leg hitting against the booth as it bobbed up and down.

I thought Henrietta would look smug or self-righteous, but she just had the same bored look across her face that she always had. I hadn’t left Ethan’s until late, but I knew Henrietta would still meet me at Benny’s if I asked. It was a perfect excuse not to go to school tomorrow anyway.

“You got over that sooner than I thought,” she blew across the surface of her coffee. I was confused for a second before remembering the GHB. That wasn’t important now.

“I need your help.” I felt better after saying it out loud.

“Oh Dylan, what happened?” She sat her coffee down. This was the closest she came to being sympathetic, I thought I should probably take advantage of it.  I looked down at the table so my bangs fell over my eyes in a way that I hoped conveyed how pathetic I was.

“First I want you to tell me how you knew that I had feelings for him.”

She looked over at me like maybe the memories would be on my face. And I thought for a crazy second they might be and turned to look at my reflection in the window behind me. But I could only see my own eyeliner smudged green eyes projected over the view of the parking lot.

“I guess it was our sophomore year,” she said, lighting a cigarette. “Ethan had just started hanging out with that chick that used to be friends with Mike Makowski.”

“Lynn Gelsa,” I said, flipping my hair out of my eyes. “Or _Bloodrayne_.”

Henrietta laughed, “Whatever. I remember you found them smoking behind the school together after you’d cut fifth period. And you made me stand in the back of the library with you during lunch discussing why the vampire kids were a poison and how Ethan was betraying all of us. You looked so upset; like someone had beaten your dog with a baseball bat. I thought I was going to have to do something radical like hug you.”

“It was legitimate,” I said, “why was he suddenly so okay with douchey vampire kids, because one of them had grown tits?”

Henrietta raised an eyebrow and shrugged, “Then you found out that he had given her a ride home from school the next week. You wouldn’t talk to him. And when he finally confronted you about it, you said he was messing up the dynamic of the band. I thought he was going to tell you to mind your own fucking business because he should have. But what did he do?”

“He stopped hanging out with her.”

“For you.” Henrietta clasped her hands together in mock endearment.

“No, for the band. Anyway, I wouldn’t have wanted any of us to be distracted by people we were dating.”

“What about when I dated Damien for six months, broke up with him, dated him again, then he broke up with me and I spent the time we’d scheduled for band practice burning his record collection in my backyard. And you never said a word. You just sat on my parent’s K-Mart patio furniture smoking with Ethan and Georgie.”

“That was different.”

“Why? Because I’m not Ethan.”

“Whatever. Okay. Point proven. Anyway, that’s not even why I asked you to come here. Today I spent the entire day with him alone in his apartment and nothing happened.”

“Why did you think anything would? Just because you suddenly knew?”

I hadn’t considered that.  “I don’t know, I thought maybe I’d see whatever you see. But he was the same.”

“Of course he was. He does have practice at it. By my estimate he’s had warm fuzzy feelings for you since he was in 9h grade. But I don’t pay that close attention to Ethan’s whims and whimsies, so maybe longer.”

“Anyway, I think you might be wrong about that too. It sounded to me like he has feelings for Georgie.”

Henrietta raised a speculative eyebrow. “He said that?”

“Well no, he said if Georgie had wanted to experiment with someone that he should have asked him instead of Ike.”

“Oh. My. God.” Henrietta let out a dramatic sigh. “He _would_ say that. He is so full of himself, it’s disgusting.”

She noticed I was still staring at her.

“But don’t worry about that,” she waved her hand, “he was just showing off—anyway, Georgie is like 10.”

“He’s 14.”

“Lolita,” she laughed.

“It could be true,” I was quick to point out, but really just wanting to laugh at the idea like she was.

“Okay, yeah _maybe_. In the way that anything could be true if you squint your eyes enough at it. Probably not true, but maybe.” She waved her empty coffee cup through the air until the waitress walked over to refill it. The waitress gave me a dirty look like I was in charge of Henrietta’s bitchy behavior. “Anyway,” she continued. “You said you wanted my help.”

“Yeah. I don’t want to take a chance kissing him or something if he really doesn’t have feelings for me. It would fuck things up and make everything weird.”

“Don’t worry.” She was obviously enjoying herself. “I know exactly what we’re going to do.”

She took what I can only characterize as a _victory_ sip of coffee. I wondered what I would be doing right now if I had normal socialization skills. Probably sitting across the table from Ethan instead of Henrietta talking out our feelings. He’d look beautiful and I’d be chewing on my nails. When I thought about it that way, I felt a lot better about going along with whatever Henrietta was planning. 


	5. Chapter 5

_The way that you look at me now, makes me wish I was you._

_-The Cure_

**x.**

“Do you want a drink or something—you’re stressing me out.” Henrietta was looking pointedly at my fingers that had been tapping against my knee. She acted like she was above the anxiety of tonight. But I could tell from the way she kept reapplying her lipstick that she was nervous.

“Do you have any idea how long it will be until I accept a drink of any kind from you again?” I was sitting on her bed chain smoking to the point that my throat hurt. I didn’t know that could still happen. “Anyway, it was a stupid idea to do this on the night of this show.”

She tilted my head back and applied more eyeliner. “No,” her breath tickled my cheek, “what’s wrong with looking good for the show?”

We’d spent the free time of the last four days that we hadn’t been practicing to go on elaborate shopping trips for tonight. I was wearing the result of that now; skin tight black pants, a thick studded belt, a V-neck shirt with a vest pulled over it. Yesterday she’d re-dyed my hair so that it was vivid red again. And tonight she’d teased it out to angles I didn’t think were gravitationally possible.

It seemed stupid that I spent any time at all thinking about fashion now. I’d been practicing so hard for the show all week, my fingers had calluses like they used to when I first started playing. Yesterday Henrietta, Georgie, and I had cut our afternoon classes after I’d been too anxious to eat lunch. We’d spent the rest of the day practicing in her garage without Ethan. He had still been at work, which had probably been for the best. During our usual practice time on Thursday I hadn’t been able to able to concentrate on how the music sounded because I was too busy being hyper-aware of how close I was standing to him.

But the set list was done, I’d practiced as much as I could, and Henrietta and I had already loaded her car with the instruments. So I supposed that she was right, there wasn’t any harm in looking good. Even if her motives weren’t for me to impress record label scouts, but to impress Ethan with how I was dressed. Anyway, I’d made good use of the hour I’d sat on her bed while she’d teased her hair by playing through the set with my acoustic guitar.

“Is that eyeshadow?” I pulled back, as she leaned over me with a makeup brush now.

She grabbed my chin and came towards my left eye with the brush until I was forced to shut it. “It’s red.  It’ll look hot.”

She’d also gone on a spending spree and was wearing the ruffled black and white dress I’d helped her pick out along with maroon leggings and spikey heels. Her fake eyelashes made her eyes look huge and judgmental as she stood back to look me over.

“If Ethan doesn’t want to jump your bones tonight, then we won’t have any trouble finding someone who will,” she said and winked. I wondered if the makeover had caused her to swap bodies with Bebe or something.

“You’re probably as tall as he is in those boots.” She continued. The bulk of my money had been spent on the knee-high buckled boots that gave me an extra three inches of height.

I stood up to look in the mirror, ready to protest the eyeshadow. But the red was subtle and pulled the green of my eyes through the heavy black eyeliner that was carefully smudged around them. And the clothes she’d picked out for me clung to my body, accentuating how thin I was. Above the low hem of the shirt my collar bones stuck up.

“Now who is hardcore goth?” Henrietta said as she reapplied her purple lipstick again.

“Should we really measure it by whose face can absorb the most makeup?”

Henrietta shrugged. “You should have let me pierce your lip though.”

“That wasn’t a piercing needle, it was your dad’s fishing hook.”

“I put it in alcohol, it was clean.” She could sit there and roll her eyes at me, but I’d like to see her let me come near her lips with sharp metal.

“We should go.” I looked at myself once more in the mirror, studying the stark contrast of the black and red in my hair. “We need enough time to set up.”

“One more thing,” she said, holding up a long string of metal necklaces woven into one another. “You need to be wearing these.” I ducked my head so she could fasten them around my neck. “Now we can  leave.”

It was about a two hour drive to the club. When we pulled into the parking lot, she turned to me.

“So you’re going to kiss him no matter what.” Henrietta said. We’d had this pep talk several times this week. I felt more like a child promising not to swim in the deep end than a teenager swearing to kiss my friend.

“Yeah, just not until after the set. I can’t risk fucking things up right before we play the biggest gig of our career.”

“You’re not going to fuck anything up Dylan. You look like the lovechild of Gerald Way and Jade Puget right now. You’re too pretty to fail.”

I got out of the car and started hauling the equipment from the backseat. “But even if it ends terribly, at least I’ll know. And if he wants Georgie—”

“Oh my god. Shut up about the Georgie thing. It’s like some sort of bizarre conspiracy theory. This time next week I’m going to see you wearing an aluminum hat and playing our songs backwards.”

“Shit, I’m just telling you what he said.”

“And I’m telling you what I know.”

I rolled my eyes and followed her into the back entrance of the club.

Ethan was already waiting on the wings of the stage with Georgie. I sat my amp on the floor, looking for the best place to set it up.

“Nice of you two to show up,” Ethan sneered. He was in his typical outfit; black pants, a black and white striped button-down shirt, and thin suspenders.

“We’re three minutes late, do we need a pass?” Henrietta said. I felt too sick with nerves to listen to them argue. When I came back in with my guitar Ethan was grabbing the keyboard she was carrying and began unfolding it. “Were you too busy playing dress up to remember we had a gig?”

Henrietta twirled. “Don’t be jealous. I can probably find this dress in your size.”

“Christ, you two look like you could be on an album cover,” Georgie said, jumping down from his stool. “When did you get those boots Dylan?”

“Uh, I don’t know.” I was looking out at steadily crowding venue. Most people were huddled around the bar, ordering their drinks awhile. Ethan was looking down at me as I kneeled to sort out the cords. Right away I knew this hadn’t worked. Surely he would have complimented us by now…or something. And if I wasn’t good enough tonight, I never would be.

“We’re supposed to start in ten minutes,” he said to me as I tuned my guitar. The crowd was certainly trendier in Denver than the suburbs surrounding South Park. I thought I’d feel more like we belonged here, but really it made me feel like everyone here knew we were white trash wearing eyeliner.

 A string snapped against my hand.

“Fuck!” I shook the pain out where it’d stung. I stared down at the angry line forming on my palm. At least it wasn’t bleeding.

Ethan was at my side, and placed his hand under my own. “I’m nervous too.”

I watched him as he looked down at my palm, not letting go. I did feel better when he touched me. But why did it have to be in these small ways that went nowhere.

“But on our worst day we’d still be way better than the typical screamo shit they have to stand through,” he said.

“Ha, yeah.” I smiled slightly at the comment. How did he do it? How did he always know the right thing to say? It felt strange being eye to eye with him like this. Usually I was looking up.

“Are your back-up strings still in the back of your guitar case?”

“Yeah,” I said. This would be the perfect moment, the perfect time to kiss him. I thought I was going to for a minute no matter what I’d said earlier. He looked so understanding, so familiar, that I was sure that I could do nothing wrong in his eyes.

“I’ll get it,” he said. When he let go of my hand I thought for sure it was going to drop to the floor and break. I blinked and remembered I had to replace a string and got to work unwinding the peg.

 

**xx.**

I couldn’t believe how incredible the show was going. There was tons more people interested in our music here, and they were clinging to the edges of the stage. It made me look forward to the time that we could leave South Park for good and be around people like this all the time. A few girls were standing directly below me. I saw the one pull her shirt down so from this angle, very little was left to the imagination. I was being, what I can only describe as, eye-fucked. It didn’t feel bad. I strummed through a particularly challenging power chord, flicking my bangs away from my eyes. Sweat was trickling down my neck; my new shirt was clinging to me uncomfortably. I was disappointed every time a song was finished and I saw our set coming to an end.

“We showed them. Dark wave isn’t dead,” Ethan said to me as I grabbed the water bottle sitting on my amp after we’d finished.

“Yeah we fucking killed.”

We packed our gear into Ethan and Henrietta’s cars before brandishing our fake IDs to get back in.

“Find us a table and I’ll get us a round,” Ethan said. He came back with four plastic cups.

“So where’s Ike?” I asked as Ethan handed Georgie a beer.

“His mom wouldn’t let him come to Denver,” Georgie shrugged. “He tried to lie, but she’s been surveilling our Facebook page.”

“Just another reason to fuck all forms of social media,” Henrietta said to me. I was tired of this argument.

“We can’t just ignore the fact that the internet exists when promoting the band.” I took a long sip of the beer. Ethan was playing with his earring, twisting it around his finger and then letting it swing loose to hit his neck.

“We can, you _choose_ not to. Do you think Robert Smith promoted his first gig by uploading enough megapixels to his FaceCrook account?”

“I guess we’ll never know.” I wished she’d just shut up about it. Ethan was mumbling something to Georgie and I couldn’t focus on either conversation. Now that they were sitting together the age difference did make the idea that they could be together seem ridiculous.

“You know I’m right Dylan.”

“Hey, the next band is setting up. We’re going to see if they need any help,” Ethan said, doing a half wave at us. I tried to think of a reason that they should stay, but they were already standing, and I couldn’t think of one. I watched as they pushed their way to the stage, beers in hand.  

“And there they go.” I narrowed my eyes as Ethan shook the lead singer’s hand on the stage and Georgie stood by his side. Even if they weren’t together romantically it didn’t mean that Ethan couldn’t prefer Georgie’s company to mine.

“Don’t use that as a reason not to go through with it. When they come back, ask to talk to Ethan alone, and then do what you said you would.” She made a dramatic kissy face at the air.

“God, what are they even doing? Wasn’t it enough that they drove up here together?”

“ _We_ drove here together,” Henrietta pointed out. “Anyway, no one was looking at Georgie during the show, Mr. Guitar Sex God, including Ethan.”

I frowned down at my drink. I couldn’t decide if I thought what she was saying was true or an easy lie.

“Time for me to go,” she said, poofing her hair out with her fingers. “There’s a blonde across the room that I need to make my wife.”

I followed her gaze to a tall blonde in a striped shirt across the club. He was sneaking glances at her over the surface of his drink.

“Be careful,” I called after her. “I hear there are people who will sprinkle whatever they want in your drink.”

Henrietta flipped me off without turning around.

The table was empty now, and I chewed on my nails as the next band started into their first song. I’d lost track of Ethan and Georgie. They were probably pressed against the stage together. How was I supposed to kiss Ethan if I couldn’t find him? I needed something to do with my hands, another drink felt like the perfect prop at the moment. The bar was crowded, but there were a few stools open along the side. I laid a five on the bar and ordered another beer. Better to stick to what wouldn’t make me in any way drunk after last weekend.

I tried to practice the words I would use to get Ethan alone with me, mixing them around in my head until they sounded natural. I’d ask him to go outside to smoke with me; maybe I’d press our cigarettes together to light them. Then before handing him his, I’d lean in and kiss him before he could ask me what I was doing. And maybe he’d kiss me back. Or maybe he’d laugh in my face. Either was better than not knowing which. I tried to find him in the crowd, but everyone’s shoulders looked the same as they were backlit by the stage lights.

“There you are,” a loud voice boomed in my ear. I turned cautiously, not entirely sure if they were talking about me. It was a stocky man, probably in his mid-thirties, dressed trendy with a faux-hawk glued in place. “The guitarist from the Belladonnas?” He raised a thick eyebrow as he looked me over.

“I’m Chuck Roman with Black Pool Records,” he stuck out a hand, and I grabbed it. Instead of shaking my hand, he squeezed it firmly. I sat up straighter. It was happening. “And you are Dylan, is that right?”

“Yeah,” I said, a little dumbfounded. But he was grinning so wide, and his teeth almost looked blue against the lights projecting from the stage. He slid his card across the bar to me. I didn’t know what to do with it, so I kept reading the embossed letters over and over again.

“It’s great to meet you Dylan. It’s always a privilege to meet fresh talent.”

He slid onto the stool next to me. “What is that you’re drinking? Beer? No, a performance like that deserves something a little stronger, don’t you think?”

I nodded, as he pulled out a wad of twenties and ordered us both shots. The bartender sat two little plastic cups in front of us and filled them. Chuck winked at me, and I smiled back at him.

“To continuing success,” he lifted his. I followed and gagged the shot back.

“The thing is Dylan, I’m sent out to clubs like this all across the state to pick the next big names in the industry. And talented lead guitarists are hard to come by.”

I nodded, I could barely believe this was really happening. “I practice all the time. It’s my life.”

“I could tell,” he said, his fingers tapping against the bar. “Some of those chord progressions were extremely advanced. Most people your age couldn’t come close to that level of skill.”

I could feel myself blushing at the compliment. “That’s really great to hear.”

“You need representation if you want to make it out of Colorado though. I want to be that person,” he said, raising an eyebrow as his hand dropped to my leg. I blinked, but he was still talking like he wasn’t doing it. “You aren’t signed to a label, are you?”

I shook my head, trying not to look down at his thumb stroking my thigh. Maybe he’d had more to drink than I realized. Surely he wasn’t usually this friendly? I felt anxious but tried to maintain eye contact. I wondered who could see what was happening between us and had to fight the urge to look around.

“Well it’s a matter of time if you keep playing gigs like that.” He ordered me another drink which I sipped slowly. I didn’t want to seem unappreciative, or worse, juvenile. “But don’t let yourself settle. Never settle. That’s what I’m always telling kids, but they get sucked in by big promises. You have to know what to look for.”

I nodded, looking back down at his card. I wish Ethan was here, he’d know what to say to Chuck. But I saw no familiar faces. I wondered where the balance was between wanting to beg Chuck for representation and seeming confident. “Yeah, I want to do what I can to promote the band.” He smiled at me like I had done okay.

“I can certainly help you with that Dylan,” he said, watching me closely as I held the drink he’d bought me up to my lips. “I have to tell you, that watching you up there, I thought—this kid has got his look down. You remind me of how I used to dress back in the nineties. Now-a-days it’s this hipster garbage. But there was something about all this black.” He touched the edge of my vest slowly, tracing it up until he got to my collar bone. “Goth? Is that how you’d describe yourselves?”

I looked straight down at my drink, and tried to remember what we were supposed to be talking about. Where he’d touched my chest and neck were burning cold. “We like to think of ourselves as a cross between dark wave, synthpop, and art rock.”

He nodded enthusiastically, “I totally get it. Let me see this hair up close.” I leaned over for him. He tilted my chin back up and winked at me. “Very cool.” And I wasn’t confused anymore about what I’d have to do in order to keep his attention with his hand still on my jaw. “You’re pulling it off well. But a talented guy like you shouldn’t be playing at dives like this. I can front the money to get your band’s demo put out.”

I thought about being able to quit Harbucks. I thought about a demo with our songs on it. And a deal with a record company. It was everything I’d ever wanted being handed to me on a platter in this loud club. He was smiling widely at me now like I was doing all the right things, and his arm slipped down my neck until it wrapped firmly across my shoulder. “Finish your shot,” he said under his breath, “and we’ll get the fuck out of here, it’s full of kids.”

I smiled shyly at him and did what he asked. I was playing a part, I understood that now. “You’re a tease,” he said throatily into my ear as I swallowed, his tongue sliding along my earlobe. I wanted to squirm away from him, but forced myself to sit there and look like this was what I wanted. “But you won’t be smiling like that when those lips are wrapped around my cock,” his breath hit against my neck.

“What’s going on?”

Chuck and I turned around and looked up at Ethan. “Oh it’s the frontman,” he said in the same congenial voice he’d used earlier. “I’m Chuck Roman, talent scout of Black Pool Records. I was just discussing your band’s performance tonight.”

“Okay,” Ethan said in a tone that seemed to imply how unimpressed he was. Meanwhile he was looking at me like he knew Chuck’s salvia was coldly drying against my ear. I tried to will him to fuck off with a glare. I didn’t need his intervention, this is what I wanted. This is how the business worked. Someone had to do it, better me than him or Georgie.

“In fact, buddy, your guitarist and I are going to head somewhere we can better discuss the Belladonnas future with my label.” Chuck was standing now, pulling me up by the arm to stand with him. I felt the alcohol burn together in my stomach all at once.

“Great, then I should come too.” Ethan’s arms were folded across his chest.

Chuck looked him up and down. “I’m sure Red can fill you in later—right?” Chuck said, turning to me. I wondered if he’d forgotten my name.

“Yeah, I’ll call you about it tomorrow Ethan—why don’t you go find _Georgie_ ” I said. Ethan shot me a confused look as Chuck started to tug me along with him. I tried to think of how I’d get home from wherever he was going to take me. South Park seemed a million miles away.

But Ethan grabbed my arm and held me in place. “We do everything as a band. I don’t think so.”

“Listen, I’ve bought this kid $30 worth of drinks, and I’m going to get my money’s worth. So back off.”

I briefly worried that Ethan would think that was a fair price and leave. I couldn’t look at either of them anymore.

“Why don’t you pull out your hair plugs and shove them up your ass,” Ethan said, his fingers pressed firmly into my arm.

Chuck laughed and let me go. “Fine. It’s not worth all this trouble. But know this;” he said, leaning down so he was sure I could hear him, _“anyone_ could be just like you.” He snatched his card out of my fingers. “Good luck with your infantile garage band.”

 I felt my heart drop to my feet as I watched him disappear into the crowd.

“Get off of me.” I ripped myself out of Ethan’s grip.

“Where are you going?” He looked ready to stop me if I was planning on running after Chuck.

But I wasn’t. I needed to breath for a minute and let the full impact of what just happened hit me. I shouldered my way through the crowd and threw open the door to the back exit of the club.

The bass from inside was pounding against the wall behind me as I lit a cigarette. I closed my eyes and felt the sweat on my skin turn cold in the November air. All the opportunities that had seemed so solid just a minute ago had shrunk back into dreams in my head.

“What were you thinking?” Ethan said before I heard the door slam behind him.

I didn’t want to look at him. But he seemed to insist on it as he stood squarely in front of me, blocking my view of the brick building behind him.

“Trying to get our band supported by a label.” I watched the smoke I exhaled dissolve until it was just air again.

“Really? If that was your big plan then you and Henrietta should have called ahead so I would have known to wear my whore costume too.”

“Ha ha.”  I felt my lips curl around the filter of the cigarette.

He ran his fingers through his hair “Just to be clear, you _do_ understand he was trying to fuck you.”  I wondered if he really thought I was that stupid. I wasn’t typically on this end of his condescension.

“Yeah I picked up on that when he put his tongue in my ear, but thanks for your expert analysis.” He looked away from me like he didn’t want to hear what I was saying anymore.

“Oh, see I guess we haven’t been communicating then.”  He threw his hands in the air. “Because I thought we were going to rely on, you know, talent and hard work. But if I’d known you were going to blow the first record scout to buy you a drink I wouldn’t have bothered showing up.”

“This is the way the industry works. You should have been grateful that it didn’t have to be you.”

“It never would have been!” he was yelling now. I never realized I hadn’t heard him yell before until this moment. “It shouldn’t have been you either!” he grabbed my shoulders like I needed to listen harder. But I was tired of him screaming at me when my back was to a wall.

I exhaled in his face. “I wasn’t asking for your good opinion, but god knows you think everyone needs it.”

He pushed away from me, blinking from my smoke stinging his eyes, and laughed a little into the night, like he and an imaginary audience were in on a joke I couldn’t get. “I guess I just didn’t realize what a slut you were.”

I looked down at way I’d dressed for him. At the boots I’d stared at myself wearing in the mirror of the store, trying to decide if he would love me in them. My hands were shaking at my sides, and I felt my cigarette slip from my fingers. I looked back at him. I thought I might want to hit him. But he still looked so beautiful standing there in the alley, his curls falling around his eyes in the wind. I grabbed his shirt in my fist and jerked him towards me. And I smashed our lips together. He froze under my touch as my lips pressed against his closed mouth. But a second later he started struggling to get away from me until he finally succeeded in shoving me off of him.

“Dammit Dylan!” He was breathing heavy into the night.

I stumbled back, touching my lips, almost in validation of what I’d done. I could taste the disgusting gin and rum combinations I’d consumed in the club still on my lips. And now it was on his too.

“That’s what I thought.”  I said quietly, as he stood across from me, his eyes wide and angry. I walked back into the club. I thought for a second that he was following me. But I when I stopped backstage where my coat was in a pile on top of Henrietta’s I was alone. I pushed my arms through the sleeves and headed for the front entrance of the club. I couldn’t rely on Henrietta for a ride home now that she had someone to keep her company. And I would rather die than so much as look at Ethan.

I pulled out my phone and searched for bus schedules in Denver when I got outside. There was still a bus running a block away that would get me to South Park. It’d take an extra hour than driving by car, but I didn’t care. I hoped it took until morning, so that when I got off this night would be over.

 

**xxx.**

We’d been driving awhile uninterrupted now that the main stops for Denver had gotten off. It was just an empty road going through intermittent suburbs. It was already 2AM. I hated everyone that was sleeping dreamlessly in their beds. Tomorrow was another day of the same coffee, the same rooms, the same unfulfilled hopes, but at least they didn’t have to face that yet. My fingers curled around the pack of cigarettes in my lap but the bus driver had already yelled at me twice for smoking. But now it was just me and a sleeping man in a Northface zip-up, and I didn’t know why anyone should care what I did or didn’t do.

I wondered where I’d be right now if I had been able to leave with Chuck. Getting drunker in his hotel room with his hands probing my body? I wrapped an arm around myself at the thought. And would I have really gone through with it? Would it have actually worked? It all happened so fast, with me eating the compliments from his hands like a starved animal. He’d obviously had practice picking up desperate musicians at shows before. I was just another one of his fools. I could still feel his tongue on my ear; I wished I could cut it off like Van Gogh. I’d put it in an envelope and mail it back to my naiveté.

Ethan was right to stop me. I tugged at the skin tight pants, feeling disgusted with myself. Why can’t I ever think anything through? I’m stupid, and now I knew it, now I could see it. Chuck Roman must have seen it too. It may as well of been written across my forehead as I smiled at him. I curled up tighter in the seat, pulling my coat up to my chin. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine it was my 17th birthday again and I was on my way to see AFI with Ethan. Back when he loved me. Back when he didn’t think I was a slut. But the bus shuttered and stopped.

I opened my eyes to see the sign for South Park glowing under a streetlamp.

The late night air was freezing but I still had at least a fifteen minute walk back towards my house. I put a cigarette between my lips, grateful for that much at least.

“Dylan!”

I jumped at the sound of my name.

Ethan was sitting on the curb, a small pile of cigarettes mashed into the cement next to him. He stood quickly and walked over to me. I hadn’t planned on having to deal with this for at least a day. Why was he here; wasn’t it enough for him to shove me?

I continued lighting the cigarette and took a long drag. But he looked so relieved to see me; it was hard not to be a little glad to see him too.

“God I thought you either took this bus or left with that dick.” His cheeks were uncharacteristically red from the cold, and his trench coat blew around his legs.

“I should get home.” I turned slightly in the general direction of my house.

“Let me give you a ride.”

I looked over at his Jetta parked along the curb. I thought about him getting here an hour ago, looking up at every passing headlight for a bus that may or may not have me on it. I wanted to be swayed by the gesture, I wanted to forgive him. But the fact that I didn’t have to look up at him reminded me of the boots I’d bought for him and exactly how whorish he thought I was, and how easy it was for him to say so.

“No, I’m good.”

“Dylan, please.” He reached out to grab my hand. His fingers were freezing in mine and I unconsciously curled my hand around his to warm him up. “I’m sorry. I saw that asshole basically molesting you at the bar, and I couldn’t think straight. And then you acted like it was fine, but you didn’t look fine. You looked scared. And I just didn’t know how to react. And in the alley it’s like you didn’t realize what had almost happened to you, and I just wanted to you to tell me that it never would. You’re not a slut, fuck, I’m a dick okay?” He took a breath and smiled at me in a small crooked way. “I’m so glad you’re here and not still in Denver with him.”

And then he grabbed me before I could respond and pulled me into a hug, “I’m sorry,” he said again softly into my hair. And I stood there, letting him hug me. I thought for a second that I could feel his heart beating against my chest, but it was just the sound of my own blood in my ears. He pulled back eventually, and wrapped his hands around the back of my neck and kissed me. I reached out for him now, holding him close to me, as I kissed him back, his lips were hesitant and soft on mine and felt nothing like they had when I’d kissed him earlier.

He drew back and looked at me. “What did you think? That I don’t want you, that I haven’t always?”

I was looking down at his lips as he talked. “I don’t know,” I said, trying to remember what I had thought. But all the capacity to see beyond this moment dropped off to some inaccessible part of my brain. “But why didn’t you do something about it?”

He pushed my bangs away from my eyes. “I thought you were dating Henrietta.”

“What?” I laughed, “ _why_?”

“Why not?” I guess that was fair. He had no reason to think I was gay, I’d never said so. Anyway, I thought it was probably better to leave out the small detail that I’d thought he was in love with Georgie.

I leaned over and kissed him again, grasping my hands around his neck. “You’re so cold,” I mumbled against his lips.

“Let’s go to Benny’s.” He grasped my hand again and pulled me towards his car.

“Just take me home first, I need to get out of these clothes that asshole touched and possibly burn them.”

Ethan turned the heat up full blast after he’d started the car. “You look incredible,” he said. “But I think I prefer you in striped cardigans and creepers.” He kissed the side of my head. I thought about all the cups of coffee we’d drink at Benny’s until the sun came up and deliberated whether or not we’d hold hands under the booth. It felt like the most un-goth thought I could have but I didn’t care, not really. 


	6. Chapter 6

_People who talk about their dreams are actually trying to tell you things about themselves they’d never admit in normal conversation._

_—Chuck Klosterman_

 

**x.**

It was hard to concentrate on my World History paper with Ethan across the store sorting a new shipment of records. The bottom of his shirt kept pulling up as he leaned over, his black jeans making his skin even paler in comparison. I looked back at my textbook and frowned at the illustration of King Louis XVI smiling smugly up at me like he knew how sexually repressed I was right now. I slouched further down the wall and tried not to do anything that could be characterized as pouting.

The record store was dimly lit, and now that it was dark, the string-lights lining the walls cast moody shadows on the shelves. I could see why Ethan liked working here. He looked up from the shipment he was unloading, and waved a copy of _Junkyard_ by The Birthday Party. He’d ordered it for me last week to complete my NickCave fanboy collection.

“Fucking awesome,” I said, shoving my textbook aside, and taking the album from between his fingers. “Now I just need the re-masters and my life will be complete.”

“How’s your essay going?”

I looked back at the book with a sigh. “It’s just another hoop to jump through for a teacher who can’t remember my name.”

“It’s a hoop closer to graduation.”

Sometimes I wondered if Ethan was so concerned with me graduating because he knew our band would fail. I’d need my diploma to get a job as a bank teller or whatever when we stopped being able to book shows at the shittiest of Park County venues.

“Stop looking so forlorn,” he said, smiling a little at the dark look on my face. He snaked an arm around my shoulders and pressed his lips against my forehead. But then the front door opened, a group of teenagers came in, and he moved away from me again. I looked contemptuously from my history book to the teenagers who were walking towards the new Fall Out Boy display. Conformist emo fags were always ruining my life.

After Ethan and I had started dating—if I could call it that, which I wouldn’t—ever—out loud—I was surprised how happy I felt all the time when I was with him. Mostly everything else seemed shut out of my brain, and all I could see was him in this new way that was easier and better than before. But between our jobs and school it was hard to find time together. On the days I didn’t work, he’d been picking me up after school and I’d hang out here until his shift was over. Which seemed like an okay plan, except between co-workers and customers, the situation felt less like convenient together time and more like insane-close-proximity-but-no-touching time.

Ethan liked to confine any intimacy to behind closed doors, after explaining in several convincing rants about the phoniness of PDA. I didn’t mind, it felt better this way. More real, like he’d said. It’d taken Georgie two weeks to catch on that anything had changed between us. Until he’d run over to Ethan’s car after a band practice to bring him a notebook he’d left behind, and found my hands up his shirt, as he pressed me against the window of the car, our lips fumbling together—all the frustration of not touching stored up for two hours pouring out. I’d opened my eyes when Ethan grabbed my wrist and tugged my hand off of him, and turned to find Georgie grinning widely.

“My shift is over. Let’s go get food. ” He was standing over me holding my coat now.

“Already?” I said, shutting my textbook with more than a little glee. “I don’t know if you should be able to leave so soon. That was the slowest relabeling of R&B ever.”

He laughed and kicked the edge of my creeper with his boot. I stared at the way he left his foot there. “I’m methodical,” he said slowly. I trailed my eyes up his thin legs with a smirk. I packed my book into my messenger bag as he twisted his scarf to his chin. He wrapped The Birthday Party CD in paper and tucked it into my bag for me.

We walked the block it took to get to the small café we had been getting our dinner at recently. It felt so good just standing shoulder to shoulder with him in the line. Touching him, but not really—knowing how much I would be able to later. He looked at me out of the corner of his eye and smiled, and I knew he was thinking the same thing.

Neither of us were particularly hungry so we decided on two small coffees and waited until the barista brought them over to us in wide red mugs.

“So I have news,” he said, blowing across the surface of his, frowning when he didn’t have my complete attention. “Band related.”

I looked away from the Andy Warhol print over his shoulder and focused on him. “Did we book the Black Cat gig?”

“I haven’t heard,” he said, tapping his fingers against the mug. “This is better than that.”

He started digging in his coat pocket for something then passed me a folded piece of paper. “Someone asked if they could hang this in the shop yesterday.” I unfolded it and started scanning the bold print. “It’s a contest,” he explained as I read. “Any unsigned alternative band from Colorado can enter. If you win you get a spread in Alternative Press Magazine, a record deal, and open for a band on their US tour, who is TBA.”

I read over the bold print again and again, not entirely convinced that I wasn’t dreaming it into life as I went. “So we’re doing this,” I said, feeling like I was holding a treasure map between my fingers. “What, why are you looking at me like that?”

“You have to have a demo to enter—8 track minimum. And we only have five weeks until the submission date.”

“We can make a demo in a month. We have eight recordable songs.”

“But do we have the money it’ll take to record them?”

I thought about my barely stable bank account. The $100 I made at Harbucks every week mostly went to replacing guitar strings, cigarettes, food, and diner coffee. I wondered if he’d waited a day to tell me about this because he thought we’d never be able to record a demo with our collective budget in that amount of time. I was annoyed at the thought, and sipped my coffee.

“That’s not important,” I said. “How much can it cost?” Ethan was frowning at me slightly like he’d regretted telling me about this at all. 

“A lot, I’ve already called around for some numbers. Most studios charge upwards of $800 to rent, and that doesn’t include the security deposit.”

“Can you imagine how much publicity a spread in AP Magazine would get us?” I flicked my bangs away from my eyes. “Fuck Colorado. We’d have a nationwide audience.”

“If we could pull it off on time, it’d be a miracle.”

I raised my eyebrows, accepting the challenge.

 

**xx.**

Ethan was sleeping in the bedroom as I sat at his kitchen table. The room was lit by the glow of my laptop as I scribbled numbers into my history notebook. There was a place in North Park that rented their recording studio for $25 an hour and another one a little further on the edge of the county that charged slightly less.

I tried to calculate how long it’d take us to record a song, and decided on three hours if we were extremely efficient. Plus however long I’d need producing them, meaning I’d need to come up with $225 a week if we recorded every weekend until the contest deadline.

I circled the number with my pencil. Five weeks never seemed so short.

I knew Ethan wouldn’t be able to contribute, I couldn’t imagine much money was left after he paid rent, bills, and gas. Georgie and Henrietta didn’t have jobs. I saw the contest get further and further out of my reach the more the light of reality was shed on it. I thought about how unfair it was, when this is all I ever wanted and all that was stopping it was a couple hundred dollars.

“What are you doing?” Ethan was standing in the doorway, shirtless with boxers bunched up against his thigh. I looked back at the laptop and turned to a blank sheet.

“My history paper,” I said, smiling at the way his hair was poofed on the side he’d slept on. I didn’t want him to have to feel guilty about not being able to contribute if I couldn’t pull this off. I took a breath, trying to calm myself down.  

“Aw, I’m sorry I shouldn’t have made you come to work with me. The drive really kills time,” he said through a yawn. “Come sleep for a little though. I’ll get up with you early and we’ll get it done before school.”

He kissed the top of my head and pushed my bangs away from my eyes.

I shut the laptop, and slinked my arm around his waist. He was still warm with sleep, as I pulled him down for a kiss. His hair tickled the sides of my cheeks as I leaned against the kitchen counter. It was unfair that we couldn’t be together like this all the time. That we couldn’t just lock the door and never leave. When the band made it big we wouldn’t have to be separated anymore by jobs or school.

He led me back to the bed, pulled the covers over us, and drew me close. His cheek was against my shoulder as he softly mumbled, “I missed you.” I closed my eyes, trying to find a way to make the numbers fall into place as I listened to him breathing steadily against my shirt.

Later that week I was staring down at the Geometry midterm on my desk. I’d completely forgotten this was happening today. This past week had been hell calling recording studios, begging my manager at Harbucks for more hours, and practicing the songs we’d planned on recording for the demo until my fingers felt raw. If I skipped one or two days of school a week I’d probably be able to work enough hours to pay for studio fees.

In front of me the slacker McCormick kid was already flipping the midterm over to the second page. I could barely believe he was better at anything than me. I traced over my name again at the top of the page until it was bold. Everything I needed to know was formulas I’d written down in a notebook somewhere.

I tried to focus on the photocopied test on my desk. I was so frustrated with myself. Geometry wasn’t even real math, it was just memorization really. I punched a few numbers on the graphing calculator the teacher had passed out. In this moment it felt like all math was invented just to make me feel inept. I remembered us hitting the tangent button at some point in class. I tried to watch Bebe Stevens’ fingers, but it was useless. I drew a question mark in the empty space that had been left for us to show our work. I needed a cigarette.

After school Ethan was waiting in the parking lot, a copy of _The Stranger_ propped against the steering wheel of his car. “What’s the matter?” he put the book in the back as I slouched in the passenger seat.

“School,” I said moodily, turning up Ian Curtis’s wailing vocals.

I lit the cigarette, and waved at Georgie as we pulled past him and Ike standing by Kyle Broflovski’s annoyingly clean Mazda. Ethan let me finish my cigarette before he attempted conversation again. We were already at the door to his apartment when I flicked the filter onto the cement. “Don’t be morose today,” he said, unlocking the door. “Neither of us has to go to work.”

“Good we can run through the songs again.” I sighed and threw my coat against the sofa. He wrapped his arms around me as we stood together in his living room. I turned in his grasp and tried to look up at him with annoyance. I didn’t want to be hugged; I wanted to properly sulk and brood after failing that midterm.

“Maybe,” he said drawing back a bit. “Don’t you think we deserve a break? There’s a screening of _Eraserhead_ at that renovated movie theater in Denver tonight or whatever you want.”

I frowned as I thought of the horrible metal that separated the ancient movie theater chairs. “But I just changed the chord progression on _Able-Nobodies_. We should practice.”

“My throat is sore,” he said, his lips moving against my forehead as he paused a kiss. His voice was quiet, the way I’ve only heard him talk recently.

I leaned up and kissed his lower lip softly. “Yeah?”

I could taste the cigarette I’d just smoked on his lips as he deepened the kiss. I grabbed the sides of his coat and held him close as I sucked on his throat. He moaned and pulled me along with him as we fumbled to the bed. I hoped it would always feel as perfect as it did right now, the way his hands on my chest made my heart turn over and my head feel light.

An hour later, my cheek was pressed against his clavicle as he smoked. I could hear flecks of snow hitting against the window outside.

“So I found a recording studio,” I said. “It doesn’t have heating though.” I added the second detail like maybe it’d distract him from the first thing I said.

“Let’s talk about this later.” He sounded tired as he ran his fingers up and down my spine.

“But I want to record soon.” In reality, I’d already scheduled the first session for this Saturday.

I looked up and his eyes were shut, the cigarette between his fingers still burning. “You can’t pay for it all by yourself Dylan.”

“I have money saved up, this is what I want to spend it on,” I said. It sounded completely reasonable. It just wasn’t entirely true.

He took a drag of his cigarette while he considered what I said. “It’s not fair to you or to us. We should wait until we can all contribute.”

I sat up and sighed, the covers sliding down my chest, regretting it immediately. It was freezing in his room without the space heater on. I wrapped an arm around myself. “I don’t want to wait for a perfect circumstance, there’s never going to be one. We can’t fuck up _this_ opportunity.”

He stubbed the cigarette in the ashtray on the nightstand and frowned at me. I wished I had listened to him and waited to discuss this. His hair was still damp with sweat.  “I don’t think it’s so impossible to think that a couple months from now when I’m caught up on bills and Henrietta gets a job—”

“So you won’t do it. You won’t record our demo for the contest.”

“I didn’t say that,” he said quietly. “I just feel like shit because I can’t contribute.”

“You are contributing! You’re writing the lyrics. You’re doing the vocals. But most importantly you have charisma Ethan! We would never get these gigs without you. You _are_ the band with your fucking—appeal, you know?” I didn’t mean to get so upset. But it wasn’t fair of him to look so disappointed with himself because he didn’t have money. Anyone could have money.

He stared back at me, looking sad in a way I couldn’t account for and pulled me back under the covers with him.

“Okay,” he said. I let out a breath against his chest, wondering why his heart was beating so loud against my ear.  

“I’ll schedule our first session for Saturday,” I mumbled, still a little on edge.

He laid his cheek against my head and shut his eyes again.

Later we went to the diner to officially discuss it with Henrietta and Georgie. We had to wait until Georgie was done his date with Ike. Luckily Ike was only allowed out until 9:30 on school nights.

“God this is some sort of post-fucking meal for you two isn’t it?” Henrietta said, as she sat down on the edge of the booth and took off her gloves. Georgie made a face, and looked over at me and I touched my hair like it must be sticking up weird.

“Don’t be vulgar,” Ethan said, sliding his plate over to me so I could have some of his fries.

“So is this about the contest?” Georgie asked. I guess Henrietta must have let some of the details slip the past couple days. I’d spent our morning rides to school ranting about ways to make it happen.

“I guess I still don’t get why we can’t just record it on a computer?” She glared at the waitress across the diner until she brought her a cup of coffee.

 “It’s not even worth doing if it’s not done using professional equipment,” I said, looking at Ethan for confirmation. She looked at him skeptically before taking a drag of her cigarette and passing the flyer for the contest to Georgie.

“And how are we affording this?”

“I have some money saved up,” I said.

“Saved up for what?” She raised an eyebrow. I glanced over at Ethan sitting next to me. My manager had called an hour ago to tell me that he’d put me on the schedule all day Tuesday. I didn’t want anyone to know I was cutting classes to work. I didn’t want anyone to think that it was their fault.

“For this. For band stuff. If we ever needed to tour outside of Colorado. I thought it’d be good to have money for hotels.” I glanced down at my coffee. Someone told me that liars make more eye contact to compensate.

“Well, I’m in.” Georgie shrugged. “Even if we don’t win, it’ll be good to have a demo recorded.”

“If we do win, I’m dying my hair purple for the AP spread. Or black with purple highlights.” Henrietta said. She was holding her hair in front of her eyes judgmentally.

Ethan nodded, “I’ve already narrowed down eight songs that I think stand out.” He passed his notebook across the table. Henrietta snatched it before Georgie could grab it. He stared at the notebook over her shoulder. I’d left the track listing up to Ethan. He paid more attention to what songs tended to be crowd pleasers. When we were on stage I was looking at my hands while he faced the crowd.

She shook her head and laughed into her cigarette. “Are you fucking with me Ethan?  _Angels are Genderless_  is the opening track? No. It’s fucking alienating.”

“It makes a statement and sets the tone.” He shifted so his elbows were on the table, like he was preparing for battle.

I lit a cigarette and leaned back in the booth, trying to set a recording schedule in my mind.

“So we’re discussing the gender binary, what other political non-issues would you like to over-shadow the musical merit of the album?”

Ethan sighed. “Because we can’t have both musical merit and a valid message…?”

“Not in the first track,” Henrietta said. “We’re trying to show them that we actually know how to play our instruments. We need something catchy.”

Georgie and I exchanged a look as he sucked on his lip ring with a frown.

“So listen, we need to finalize this and practice these songs Thursday. This Saturday we’ll record the first two. Whatever they are.”

“Not _Angels and Genderless_.”

 

**xxx.**

I paced around my living room with my guitar strapped to my back. Ethan was supposed to be here any minute to take me to the studio for our first session.

“Nice of you to come home last night for a change.” My step dad was facing away from the TV, his mouth turned down in a permanent frown. “Your mother would like to see your face more than when you want fed.”

“Okay,” I said. I hated the way my voice got quiet when I talked to him. He’d been married to my mom for two years now and I’d never entirely gotten used to it. He wasn’t something that needed accepting. He was just a presence in the house, like the toaster or that plant that always needed watering. I hadn’t minded so much when he worked nightshifts and slept all day while I was at school. We barely acknowledged one another’s existence. But now that his hours had switched we would find ourselves in the kitchen at the same time with nothing to say. Sometimes I was still surprised to find him on our sofa, a bag of chips on his stomach with Fox News turned up too loud.  

“Your mother and I were talking about how you need to be a little less concerned with this band and a little more about passing high school.” He was sneering at my guitar, and I turned my body so he didn’t have to see it anymore. He might be wounding it with his stare in some imperceptible way.

“I’m fine.” I was looking out the window by the door to see if Ethan was here. He was usually nauseatingly on time. The only reason I was still passing history was thanks to his writing roughly 90% of my essay on the French Revolution. I’d told him to make me sound dumber or the teacher would fail me for plagiarism. He’d just raised an eyebrow and refused.

“Then why do I have a voicemail on my answering machine from a Mrs. Brown telling me you just failed a Geometry midterm?”

“I’m bad at math.” I wondered why my mom hadn’t mentioned anything about the voicemail 

“Maybe you should spend today studying then.” I wanted to tell him that maybe he should spend the day on a treadmill. Or, at the very least, outside hunting like the rest of the hicks in this town.

“I’ll study tonight, I have to go now.” I shut the door soundlessly behind me like it’d make some difference. I couldn’t stand the idea of him talking about me like he knew anything about me. I started walking to the end of my block, pacing on the corner smoking while I waited for Ethan. I tried to count down the remaining months I’d have to live under the same roof as that Bill O’Reilly disciple. I didn’t want to hear about school anymore. I didn’t want to hear about money. No one ever quantifies dreams like that in songs.

All of Thursday’s practice was dedicated to running through the three songs we were recording today. I’d spent yesterday at the studio. The owner had shown me how all the equipment worked. It was hard to explain to anyone else how hard it was to even acknowledge anything that didn’t have to do with this contest.

I saw Ethan’s car pull up along the curb and walked back towards my house. I resisted the urge to throw my cigarette down in my front yard. I could only hope it would have caught the dead grass on fire and burned the house down with my step-dad inside.

“Going for a walk?” Ethan asked, as I laid my guitar on the backseat. I slid into the passenger side and put my fingers over the heater.

“Not allowed to smoke in the house.” I shrugged. It was true. Remarkably. My Mom had never cared about my smoking before. But suddenly everyone was concerned that the smoke was staining the walls, like whoever lived there next wouldn’t paint over the eggshell white anyway. I might have been more receptive if they were concerned it was staining my lungs. But I shouldn’t be surprised. The only thing the two of them agreed on were all the ways I was worthless.

Ethan grabbed my hand and kissed my knuckles before pulling away from the curb.


	7. Chapter 7

_You think about yourself too much and you ruin who you love._

_—Conor Oberst_

**x.**

I gave Georgie a thumbs up through the sound-proof glass. “One more take” he mouthed, but I shook my head. There wasn’t time for perfection on a budget.  We were already two hours into our session and I still needed to record Henrietta’s part.

Henrietta frowned at me through her reflection in the glass of the recording booth. “Don’t be such a Nazi about it just because you’re the one sitting behind the sound board.”

“It’s a mixing console,” I said, flicking a switch pointedly.

“You’d be a lot happier if you’d drink that coffee your _boyfriend_ brought you.”

She liked to think that was some sort of insult. But anyone calling Ethan my boyfriend typically made me smile in a way I had to bite my lips to avoid. But now I just glanced at the styrofoam cup. I hadn't even heard him come back.

“Where is he?”

“Outside smoking.”

The studio owner wouldn’t let us smoke in the control room or sound booth. It was bad for our aesthetic. Henrietta said that no one would notice, but I couldn’t risk us being kicked out. This was the only studio I could afford.

“Just stay in there Georgie,” I said over the microphone. “I need you to do the next track too.”

“Let Georgie take a break; he’s been in there for a half an hour,” she said making a pouty face at Georgie who just sucked on his lip ring and raised a helpless eyebrow.

“We only have an hour left and we need to get the next track done.” I set up the audio levels for the next take.

“Then we’ll record more next week.”

“That’s not how this works!” I yelled back at her as I tried to refocus on Georgie, but it was impossible when I could see her glare in the reflection and feel it on the back of my neck simultaneously.

“You’re such a dick sometimes.”

“It’s called a deadline! Fuck!”

Henrietta just widened her eyes at me and looked back at her coffee. Georgie started into the song after I gave him the go-ahead and I bent back over the mixing console. When Ethan came back in I saw Henrietta whisper something in his ear. He mumbled something back and shrugged. I grabbed my coffee and took a sip. It did taste good, if for nothing more than the warmth of it. There wasn’t any heat in the studio, and Ethan’s hoodie was barely warm enough to stop the distraction of the cold.

“That’s good,” I said through the mic. Georgie wiped sweat from his forehead and shook out his hands.

“That’s one way to warm up,” he said as he came out of the booth and collapsed onto a chair next to Ethan.

“Okay Henrietta, you’re up,” I said, ignoring the bitchy look she gave me as she passed.

“Do you want me to take over?” Ethan asked me. I’d had to show him how to use the equipment for when I recorded the guitar parts. But it was probably better one for person to record most of the album, for continuity.

“I’m good.” I glanced at the clock. “Whenever you’re ready,” I said into the mic at Henrietta.

It took the rest of the session to finish her part alone. Every song she played we’d needed to re-take because she’d fuck up half-way through. I had to keep telling her to focus because we couldn’t keep starting over. But she’d said she’d never had to play without a cigarette before and it was messing up her balance. As if that made any sense.

Even though we hadn’t gotten everything done that I’d planned, our scheduled time was up for the day. Irritation at Henrietta for putting us behind itched between my shoulder blades as I grabbed my coat and followed Ethan to his car, at least thankful for the heat.

“You okay?” he asked as I searched my pockets for a lighter. He lit the cigarette between my lips with his silver zippo.

“We’re behind schedule.” I took a long drag of the cigarette. How was it possible that things had gotten so off in two weeks?

“We’ll figure something out,” he said. “We still have three weeks before the deadline.”

But he said it while looking out his window. A half-hearted attempt to keep me from talking about it more. I knew that he didn’t really think this was going to work; that we’d run out of time, that I’d run out of money. He had always been trying to soften the blow from the beginning. I could tell that was the way he felt when he’d promised me last week that everyone was doing their best. People didn’t say that sort of thing when they were planning on crossing the finish line.

“Yeah,” I said tersely. I didn’t need him to be the person ready to hug me after I’d fallen down.

We drove for a while in silence, until my cigarette was a nub that I flicked out the window. He looked over at me for a second as if considering what he was about to say. “I borrowed one of the vinyl Cabaret Voltaire albums from work. I thought we could stare at the ceiling of my room together while we listen to it.”

He still felt like he needed to come up with excuses for us to be alone together. It made me sad and pushed away any resentment I felt. I grabbed his hand, and held it tight against my leg. But I couldn’t explain how much I was his with words. I thought about all the quiet things we’d say to one another in the drawn curtains of his room. And all the quiet ways we’d touch one another in the dark. I wanted to pretend that the next words weren’t coming out of my mouth.

“I wish we could. I have to go to work tonight. I picked up a shift. Maybe we could get food before I go.”

“You aren’t working extra shifts to pay for this?”

“Just this one,” I lied. Of course I was. How could he ask me that? But he didn’t know the four days of school I’d already skipped to work full days at Harbucks. I’d told him Henrietta and I were hanging out after school to keep him from picking me up. I didn’t mind working so much, but making up the schoolwork was had been keeping me up until 2AM these last couple nights. I’d reached a new level of caffeine dependency.

“Benny’s?” he suggested, already heading in that direction anyway.

 

**xx.**

 

Monday night I sat in my bed staring at my cellphone. I’d cashed my paycheck earlier today but I was still $50 short of the two extra hours we’d need to record this Saturday. I felt like I was about to sell my soul as I clutched the number written in silver glitter pen between my fingers.

“Dylan.” He said. I could hear the surprised smile across the line. I almost hung up.

“Mike.” I took a breath, and stared at my pack of cigarettes across the room. This was harder than I’d imagined. “Remember last year when you asked me if I’d write songs for your band?”

“I do,” he said slowly like he was delivering lines in a movie. I rolled my eyes.

“Do you still need songs?” His band might as well be an All-American Rejects cover band. Every single song was the same three chords.

“We could always use more songs, per say.” Of course he’d play coy but I knew he was probably sitting up in his bed checking his schedule for days he was free.

“I need money. I’ll write songs, $25 each.”

“$20.”

“$25 you fucking vamp fag.”

“$20 and you don’t tell anyone you’re doing it.”

“$25 and fine.”

“Fine. Come over to my house tomorrow after school. Bring your guitar.”

I hung up and threw my phone to the corner of my bed like it was diseased. Last year when he’d made the offer during study hall I’d opened one eye and to acknowledge I’d heard him before going back to sleep. But now he was the fastest and easiest way to get my hands on $50. I was thankful that he couldn’t learn chord progressions like any other mediocre guitarist, or have an ounce of talent to make it up as he went.

The next day I stood outside his door, my hands stuffed in my pockets.

“Still living with your parents Mike?” I wondered if he’d applied all that eyeliner just for me.

“Still failing your learner’s permit test Dylan?”

“Hah.” I shoved my way in, scowling at the stock Pier One Imports paintings lining the walls.

“I made us herbal chai.” He motioned to the hand-painted teapot on the kitchen counter like I should be impressed.

“Fucking lame,” I said, but accepted the mug he poured me. Henrietta told me that she’d seen him working at the pricey organic store downtown since he’d graduated. I wondered if that’s where this was from, it tasted like cinnamon and dirt. I hadn’t seen him in months, not since we’d been playing venues outside of South Park. Maybe his ears were stretched a little wider, but he looked more or less the same.

His room was spotless, with a plant on his dresser, and several pop-punk band posters that I didn’t recognize taped to the wall. I sat on the floor, avoiding an artsy looking throw rug with a scowl.

“You can sit on my bed,” he said as he grabbed a notebook off his desk.

“I’m good.” I was already unzipping my guitar from its case. “Give me the money.”

He laid the cash on the floor between us like some sort of hostage exchange. I couldn’t say that I didn’t feel a bit cheap putting it in my wallet. But I did feel lighter; I had enough to afford this week’s studio fees.   

“So this can work one of two ways. You can suggest melodies for songs and I’ll turn them into tabs, or I’ll play some melodies I’ve already started working on and you can see which you like. Then we’ll figure out where your lyrics will go.”

Mike nodded, twirling his hair as he considered what I said. I stared at his green Fender guitar across the room with a “straightxedge” sticker on it and sighed. I felt like I was handing the enemy weapons. No one could ever know about this.

It took us until ten to get two songs worked out. I was copying the tabs down for him in his notebook, as he ate a bowl of lentil soup on his bed.

“Are you sure you don’t want anything to eat?”

I sighed and thought about the knot of stress in my stomach that was never hungry. “I’m sure.”

“So,” he tried to say casually, “do you need the money for drugs?”

“Yes Mike. Heroin. Lots of Heroin.”

He frowned, but looked me over as if deciding whether or not I looked drug-addled. I must have passed the strung-out test, because he didn’t press me on the issue. Mike probably didn’t know what to look for.

“I can get another fifty by next week,” he said, obviously pleased with what I’d written. “Two more songs. We could start Friday.”

“Fine.”

I handed him his notebook back. “I’ll record these songs tomorrow on my computer and email them to you so you’ll have them to reference.”

He scribbled his email address down on a post-it and handed it to me. “Vampir_the_undead@gmail.com. Really?”

“It’s old,” he said with a huff. “It’s ironic now.” He ushered me to the door and flicked his hair over his shoulder as he did a half-wave. “Bye Dylan.” I hated the way he said my name, accentuating both syllables in an overly familiar way.

I walked back to my house, staring down at the missed call I had from Ethan. I’d told him I was staying after school to work on a project. I felt too tired to manufacture details about it, so pocketed my phone. Tomorrow I worked at Harbucks after school, meaning I wouldn’t see him again until band practice on Thursday. By then he wouldn’t ask me about tonight. It wasn’t my fault if he wanted to remain willfully ignorant as to where this money was coming from.

I scowled at a car that passed and wished I had asked Mike for a ride home. My guitar felt like it was twenty pounds heavier. I had to force my legs to keep going until my house finally came into view. But I knew I’d never be too tired to do what I needed to in order to finish this demo. Anyway, three weeks of being tired seemed like a more honorable way to come by a record contract than what I’d considered in the past. The lights were still on in the living room when I opened the front door. I tried to will everyone to be asleep. For the light to have been forgotten. For the TV to have been left on.  

“Well look what the wind blew in,” my step-dad said from the sofa as I passed.

“Fuck off,” I mumbled, continuing to my room.

I didn’t realize he was following me until the door to my room flew back open and cracked against the wall. “You don’t talk to me like that!” He yelled, his lips curling back like an animal.

I took a step back. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest as I stared at his fingers clenching the doorframe. I wondered if he was drunk, if he’d been looking at the clock, kicking a few Coors back, waiting for me to come in the door.

“You live here rent free and what thanks do your mother and I get? Profanity!?”

His fingers released as he came towards me, shoving me hard. “Answer me!” I went sprawling across my bed, my guitar still strapped to my back, so I turned at an angle to land on my side. I wasn’t sure of the question, but his eyes were blown open and waiting for the answer.

“Terry!” My mom’s shrill voice called from the doorway, “what’s going on?”

“ _He_ comes home—tells me to fuck off!” he yelled, somehow making the words sound harsher and cruder. I was facing the wall now but I could feel him standing over me. I wasn’t myself anymore. I was this caricature that he created, a story of an out-of-control teenager he’d watched on the news.

“Dylan! Go to bed!” she said it like I wasn’t already on it. I turned slightly to see her pulling my step-dad out of the room by the arm before shutting my door with a click.

I lay where I had landed for a while, listening to my blood pumping in my ears before unstrapping my guitar and putting it in the bed next to me. I thought about calling Ethan and telling him what happened. Maybe he’d find a way to make me laugh about it. Or maybe he’d want to come pick me up. But I didn’t want him to do either. Anyway, my step-dad was a dick. That was all, there was nothing to tell.

I waited an hour until I was sure they were asleep before going to the bathroom to brush my teeth. Even after that, I thought the night seemed better spent catching up on my English homework than sleeping.

In the morning Henrietta was outside. Everything that happened last night seemed to shrink back to scale in the white light, the smoke from her muffler melting the snow that was frozen to the concrete.

“Do you want to skip today?” she said after taking the cigarette from her lips as I slid into the passenger seat.

“No, let’s get coffee on the way though.” I cringed at my reflection in her side-view mirror before dragging my fingers through my hair. My bloodshot eyes stared back at me like I’d done this to them on purpose.

“That’s bullshit. You skip to hang out with Ethan all the time lately. But you won’t when I ask you?” I didn’t have to lie to her about why I hadn’t been in school the days I was working at Harbucks. She’d decided I was going on day-dates with Ethan like I was living some sort of dream life. In reality, I hadn’t seen him in half a week. It was killing me. “Look at your fucking eyes, Dylan. Are you getting high before school without me too?” Apparently I wasn’t answering fast enough for her.

“No.” I drug the word out to fuck with her. 

She turned the music up so loud I wondered if she was trying to make our ears bleed so we didn’t have to talk to one another again ever.

 

**xxx.**

 

Thursday I sat on my amp in Henrietta’s garage. Yesterday had been hell. School. Work. Then recording Mike’s songs on my computer.

Georgie was trying to show me pictures on his phone of Ike at the Regional Science Fair while we waited for Henrietta to get back from dropping her brother off at the mall.

“Doesn’t he look better with glasses?” He held his phone closer to me. Ike’s blurry face smiled up at me, holding a trophy that towered off out of frame.

“Yeah,” I said, watching Ethan walking up the drive-way. His scarf was wrapped up past his lips, and his earring hung over the edge of it.

“Hey.” He tapped his shoe against mine. “Are we just running through the four songs we need to record Saturday?”

“Yeah.” I unfolded the track list to make sure.

“Then do you want to come back to my place? I was thinking about ordering sushi from that new place downtown.” He was looking at me like he was already steeling himself for a ‘no.’

“Of course I do,” I said quickly, grabbing his fingers and kissing them. He smiled a little, looking relieved and glanced at Georgie. I dropped his hand, wishing that Georgie could take a hint and disappear into the house for a little bit.

After band practice I slid my arms around Ethan in his car. “Sorry—” I began, but he was kissing me before I could form words. He pulled me away and kissed my cheek chastely.

“Let’s just, relax tonight. You look tired.” He meant that I looked like shit. I’d been trying to layer my eyeliner thick enough to hide the red rings under my eyes. But it was getting excessive, so I’d just given up.

I nodded, wishing I could lean on him as he drove, but settled for holding his hand and trying to listen as he talked about the new shipment of records they’d gotten in at work.

I spent the majority of the night on his sofa, my Geometry book in my lap as I caught up on late assignments. He sat on the floor his head leaning back against my side as he read another ancient looking library book.

“I fucking hate this,” I said after trying and failing for the fifth time to solve an equation and stabbed my notebook with my pencil. The point broke off and hit against the wall with a clink.

We both watched the spot where the lead landed against the carpet. “Christ Dylan, you could have blinded me.”

I laughed and let my broken pencil roll onto my lap as I tilted Ethan’s head back. “Close your eyes,” I said. He did, and I traced a finger down his pale cheek before leaning down and pressing my lips softly to each eyelid.

He was smiling when he said “I love you,” with his eyes still shut like he didn’t know he was saying it out loud. He opened his eyes the next second and sat up straight, turning around to face me. “Sorry,” he said quickly.

From the way he was looking at me I felt like I’d done something wrong. He was sorry? Sorry for loving me? Sorry for saying so? I picked up the broken pencil still on my stomach and stabbed it through the hole in the sleeve of my cardigan.

“Please don’t say it back,” he said, kissing me before I could decide either way. He pulled me down onto his lap so that we were both on the floor. I didn’t know what to do. So I waited for the minute to pass and for him to lead the way out of this conversation. He leaned his head against my forehead. “Do you still want sushi? We should eat.” It felt like a ridiculous thing, that sushi had suddenly entered into this exchange. He seemed to know it, from the weird self-deprecating look across his face.

“I’m tired,” I said quietly. It was a stall. I closed my eyes, as we sat like that, our foreheads pressed together. Not wanting the moment to be completely over until I could find it in me to react a different way, in any way.

“No, we should eat something.” He pulled me up with him as he went to get the menu. I followed him into the kitchen, as he pressed his cellphone between his shoulder and ear and ordered the food. I didn’t realize it at first, but I was still trying to decide if I loved him too. I thought I did love him, that I’d always loved him. But I couldn’t say it now.

I watched as he folded the menu and put it back in a drawer by the sink. I wished that I was him. But I wasn’t. And nothing I did felt true and nothing I said felt true even if it was. That was probably why he’d told me not to say it back. He thought I wasn’t capable of meaning it.

I had to pretend that I wasn’t bothered; that I was glad to have been given an out. I was great at it. We watched a documentary about conspiracy theories as we ate sushi and drank bottled tea. I fell asleep laying on him, as he played with my hair and I half-listened to the narrator warn about the coming of the New World Order.

“Hey, do you want me to take you home?” he said. I opened my eyes to see the credits rolling, casting shadows through the now dark living room. I twisted away from the light so my face was pressed against his stomach and my arms were wrapped around him. I knew that I loved him. I wanted to sit up and tell him so. I wanted to sit up and ask him why exactly he thought I didn’t. But I was tired, and probably, I was scared to hear the answer.

“Then let’s go to bed.” He flicked the TV off. “Come on, get up.”

“No,” I said through a yawn, bunching his button-down between my fingers. He stood up, carrying me towards the bedroom as I laughed a little into his chest.

 

**xxxx.**

Saturday had felt like it would never come. Friday at school I had two make-up tests I’d missed from skipping to work. I’d spent most of the night on the floor of Mike’s bedroom again, starting to form the next two songs for him. This time he’d offered me split pea soup and called me his “hit-maker.” I’d almost puked in my mouth with the combination of the two. It made me miss writing music with Ethan. His lyrics actually went with the way my melodies sounded.

“Let’s do it again,” I said into the studio mic as Ethan finished recording my guitar part for this last song.

“It sounded fine.” He took a sip of coffee and waved his hand at me. “Come take a break.”

“I can do it better.” I looked back down and tightened a peg, waiting for him to reset the controls.

“Go,” he said. I heard the music we’d already recorded for this track play in my headphones and I began again.

After this we only needed Ethan’s vocals and it’d be a wrap for today. Next week we’d only have two songs to do and everything would officially be recorded.  

Through the thick glass Henrietta and Georgie bent over a magazine talking to Ethan. They both stretched and grabbed their coats as I ducked my head to watch my fingers—I didn’t want to mess up the take. By the time I’d finished the song they were both gone.

I opened the control room door. “Where’d they go?”

“I told them they could leave, we’d already finished their parts,” Ethan said, the headphones hanging around his neck.

“We might need to do a retake, I haven’t listened to all the tracks again.”

“They’re fine Dylan,” he said. “Anyway I need to talk to you.”

“About this?” I waved a hand in the general direction the mixing console.

“No.” He raised his eyebrows and took a sip of his coffee like he was waiting to see if I was serious.

“After your vocals, okay? I can’t focus on anything else right now. ”

He frowned. “Yeah fine.” He walked to the stool in the recording booth, pulled the headphones over his ears, and tilted the mic up to his lips. I wondered what he wanted to talk about. Why he’d sent Henrietta and Georgie away. But mostly I was annoyed that he’d brought it up now when every minute was burning through my paycheck and the blood money I was making from Mike. Luckily, Ethan finished most of his tracks in one or two takes and we were done ten minutes early.

He grabbed the water bottle on the floor and walked back out of the recording booth.

“So…what did you need to talk about?” Now that the distraction of the demo was done I could fully process the pressure of this conversation.

He sat on one of the chairs in the control room, crossing his legs and leaning back. “How was work last night?”

“Long, boring, shitty,” I mumbled. I’d told him I’d worked after he’d suggested we check out a used bookstore downtown.  

He took a sip of his water bottle and nodded. “I went to visit you. And your co-workers said that you weren’t on the schedule.” He was tugging his earring slightly, and I tried to focus on that and not on the unreadable expression on his face. “I called you to see what was going on and you didn’t answer your phone. I just thought it was strange.”

“Oh.” A million excuses flew into my mind at once and I had a second to pick the most believable. “I must have told you the wrong days I worked. Things have been fucking crazy.”

“You _just said_ you were there.”

I grinned like this was all a joke and shook my head. Why was Ethan trying to catch me in a lie?  “Everything just bleeds together I guess. Sorry.”

“Okay,” he said simply. I wondered if he was trying to decide if he believed me. Where did he think I had been? Had he gone to my house? Did he know I hadn’t been there too?

“Sorry you went there looking for me. That was nice that you came to visit.” I stood up and sat on the chair next to him but he kept staring at the spot where I’d been.  “I feel shitty for telling you the wrong day.” I leaned over and kissed the corner of his lips a few times until he looked at me.

“No, it’s okay,” he said, kissing me back once before leaning out of my reach. I could barely taste the coffee on his lips. “I just wanted to make sure everything was okay.”

“It is,” I said. “Two more weeks and our demo will be done and we’ll just have to sit back and wait for the winning phone call.”

But he was looking at me like I wasn’t saying the right words at all. I wished he’d just tell me what he wanted to hear. I stood up and grabbed my coat, buttoning away the cold air of the studio because that was something I could do right.

“Yeah.” He wrapped his scarf around my neck as he faced me, looking tired in a way I thought he didn’t deserve. “Two more weeks.”

 


	8. Chapter 8

_If you’re alone, nothing bad can happen to you._

— _Bret Easton Ellis_

**x.**

I walked home from Harbucks staring down at my soaked black vans. It’d been snowing for the last three blocks. It wasn’t even a pretty snow. It was miserable, mushy, and gray under the orange street lights. I wiped the drops of water off my iPod screen, turning it off before unlocking the front door. I flicked on the kitchen light and stared at the dinner dishes in the sink. A family in a TV show would have left me a tupperware container of leftovers. I pulled a slice of bread from the cabinet and put it in the toaster, digging through my messenger bag on the kitchen table as I waited.

I’d printed out the paperwork for the contest during my study hall yesterday. Everything was ready to be sent in. I took it out and read over the bold print for the twentieth time. It felt less like administrative rules and more like a promise I had to make to myself every day.

“What’s burning?” My step-dad stood in the doorway of the kitchen. I whipped my head towards the toaster. Black smoke was billowing from it.

I leapt up and tried to force the lever without burning myself.

“You’re going to break it!” he pushed me away, grabbing the toaster from my hands.

“Who cares, it’s a piece of shit from Wall-Mart!” He unplugged it from the wall and held it upside down over the sink until the toast fell out.

“That’s easy to say when you don’t contribute a goddamn thing. Are you too stupid to be able to make toast without burning down the entire house?”

“I was just hungry,” I muttered, picking up the papers from the table so I could retreat into my room.

He grabbed the back of my hair, forcing me to turn around and look at him. “You’re on drugs right now, aren’t you?” His eyes were narrowed, as he tugged my face closer. “Answer me.” Tears were immediately pooling in my eyes.

“Get off of me!” I screamed, twisting my arm to grab his wrist. He let go but kept staring at me like he was trying to decide if he should hit me, if it’d be worth it. If it’d be worth an argument with my mom. “What the fuck!” I yelled again into his face trying to break his thought process.

When I reached up to touch where it felt like my hair had been half ripped out he shoved me hard. I didn’t entirely realize what was happening until was I already tripping over the chair behind me. It clattered against the floor at the same time my head smacked on the edge of the refrigerator door, throwing the room off-kilter. The contest papers sprawled across my legs. I hadn’t tried to let them go. I watched him pull a bag of chips from the cupboard before going back into the living room. And I sat there until I heard the channels changing and I knew he was done with me.

My hands were shaking as I picked the papers up, trying to put them in the right order again. I wondered if I should buy a special envelope to send everything in. Or maybe they’d have one at the post office. I stood up and blinked away the patches of black in my vision. I hated myself for wondering where my mom was as I picked the chair back up. Like she would save me.

I dug my cellphone from my pocket, and was dialing Ethan’s number as I walked to my room.

I took a shaky breath as I waited for him to pick up. It hadn’t even hurt that much. It was all over too quick to hurt. Like how Georgie described getting his lip pierced.

“Hey.” Ethan’s voice sounded so good right now.

I meant to ask him to come and get me. To immediately recount everything that just happened. But instead I said, “What are you doing?” as I laid the contest papers on my dresser. 

“I’m at a show at Persh. I thought you worked tonight.” I didn’t like the accusatory tone in his voice.

“I’m done now.” I picked at a dried fleck of mocha on my pants. “I’ll come meet you.”

“If you want to.”

“Yeah. I’ll see you in a little.”

I changed into jeans, boots, a long black sweater, and pushed my hair off my forehead from where my hat had flattened it. It was getting too long, and seemed to be pushing the limit between looking alternative and being girly. Usually Henrietta cut and dyed it for me, but I hadn’t been over to her house except for band practice in weeks. I touched the lump against the side of my head; it was sore but not bleeding. I tried not to think about the headache pulsating from all sides of it as I snuck out the back door.  I felt better just being outside. Like all the windows of the neighbor’s houses would make sure no one touched me out here.

The snow had let up now, and my footprints vanished quickly in the melting slush. I didn’t want to be someone who got beat up by their step-dad. The idea confirmed some sort of white trash in my genes that musical talent and distance could never undo. Anyway, he hadn’t meant for it to happen like that. I’d tripped.

By the time I’d gotten to the club I’d already talked myself out of saying anything about it. I paid the two dollar cover fee to the guy with a beer gut at the front door. The club used to be run by Persian guys who I’m pretty sure used it to launder money and sell drugs out the back. But now it was a shitty underage club with pool tables and live music sometimes. The big draw was the concession stand that sold soda kids just used as a mixer for the liquor they snuck in. We used to come here all the time when we were younger. We’d even had our first show here. I probably hadn’t been back since Ethan had graduated. Not now that we’re booking bigger venues.

On the front stage a girl was packing up an acoustic guitar. I guess the show was over because some auto-tuned shit was blasting from the speakers. I went to the counter and bought a Coke, wishing I’d remembered to bring something to mix in. Everyone around me was gripping someone, thrusting into them like the pounding chords were irresistibly suggestive.  I made a face and looked for Ethan. He wasn’t making it particularly easy for me.

I looked past the crowd to the tables on the edges of the club. From a table against the back wall Ethan was watching me with a bored expression. I pushed my way towards him.

“You came,” he said. He was dressed in the same outfit he’d worn to band practice today, his eyeliner a little darker, or maybe it was just smudged. It was too dark to tell.

“You thought I wouldn’t?”

He shrugged and passed me his flask under the table. I glanced down at the empty paper cups he’d stacked neatly together. I poured some of the vodka into my drink and swirled the liquids together. His fingers were tapping against the table out of rhythm with the song. I wanted to cover them with mine. Instead I took a long drink as he stared out at the Abercrombie branded bodies of our peers.

“Not much of a show,” I said, looking between the empty stage and the empty tables surrounding us. 

“There used to be.” I could see now that he was _that_ sort of drunk. Where he got philosophical and brooding about everything. This was typically the time to cut him off.

I couldn’t help but think that I shouldn’t have bothered coming here at all. But even a drunk and moody Ethan was preferable to really anyone else. I touched the cuff of his sleeve, and ran the fabric between my fingers.

When he finally decided to look at me again he said, “Were you upset earlier? On the phone?” I wondered if he’d just remembered or if he’d just decided he cared.

“I got into a fight with my step-dad. I don’t want to be at home.”

He took another drink directly from the flask and pulled his sleeve from my grip. “ _Oh_ is that it.”

“Stop.”

“Stop what?”

“Stop acting like I don’t fucking like you.”

He raised an eyebrow at me in a justified way and said nothing. It was the kind of thing I’d seen him do to Henrietta before, but never me.

I grabbed the flask from his fingers and took a sip myself.

“Ask first,” he said, his voice slurring over the s’s. 

“No.” I looked over at the hard look on his face as he stared at me like I was someone else. Someone trying to hurt him. I was tired of it. So I grabbed his collar and pulled him towards me and kissed him firmly. He grabbed me back and returned the kiss, surprising me. He softened it, making it sweeter—the way it usually was, and my fingers slid from his collar a bit when I realized he wasn’t going to pull away. I slunk my fingers under the edges of his suspenders instead, as we made out, barely breaking apart for quick breaths. He tasted like cigarettes, and the same addicted part of my brain that wanted nicotine, screamed out for him too.

Somewhere in all of it the flask dropped from the table, and leaked the remaining vodka onto the sticky floor. He was sucking on my neck and I groaned a little into his ear. I rubbed his back with my eyes closed, as he kissed along my jaw and down my throat. The club was playing the songs that they thought we all loved and I tried to focus on the senseless lyrics instead of Ethan’s hand gripping my thigh as he leaned across the table.

“You’re so fucking beautiful,” he mumbled against my skin.

“God, Ethan—” I tilted his chin up so he was looking at me. And I could see the glazed drunk look across his face as he watched me seriously, like he knew how important it was for me to say it. “I want to be with you. I always want to be with you.”

“I know, god I’m sorry,” he said, pushing my bangs away from my eyes and kissing my forehead. “I’m glad you came, I fucking love you.” He grinned a little at the words. “I love you,” he said again softly as he leaned up and kissed my lips.

I drew him closer until he was half sitting in my chair, our foreheads pressed together. “I must make you feel like I don’t want this though.” I twirled one of his curls around my finger and let it go.

“No,” he said, shaking his head against mine. “Just don’t let me fuck this up.”

A group of girls was walking over to a table by us in clanking heels. He looked around uncomfortably, as if remembering where we were for the first time. “Let’s go for a walk.” He picked up his flask from the floor, wiping it off with a napkin before pocketing it. When we stood up, he swayed and grabbed my shoulder for support.

We walked along the street through the misty sleet that still hung in the air. I’d made him hold on my hand after he’d tripped over a break in the concrete right outside of the club. We walked through the gates of the cemetery. I remembered how he’d said that he’d loved me and how happy it’d made him as he lit two cigarettes between his lips and then handed me one. I thought he was probably the only person in the world that did.

“Tell me what happened with your step-dad,” he said as we sat on the bench. He pulled me closer so I was sitting in his lap, probably mostly for warmth. My head still ached dully from where it’d smacked. I knew it was one of those things where if I said what happened out loud it would sound worse than it had been.

“He’s just a dick.” I laid my head against his shoulder, staring into the gray slabs poking up through the ground. It normally felt fine being here, away from other people. But something about the thickness of the air tonight made me feel uneasy. I was glad I wasn’t alone. “Can I stay with you tonight?”

He held me closer and said into my hair. “I want you to.”

 

**xx.**

Friday night I sat in the back of Tweek Bros Coffeehouse as Mike’s band was finishing their set. It was the first and certainly the last time I would willingly watch them play. I’d agreed to ride along to their show and offer pointers. Tonight Mike was playing the songs I’d written for the first time live. It was easier to earn $25 sitting here listening to this emo garbage than being on my feet at Harbucks for three hours. After he paid me tonight I’d have enough money to cover the rest of the fees with my normal Harbucks schedule. No more skipping school. No more sitting in Mike’s bedroom. No more lies, however justified.

I’d made the condition that none of the other vamp kids could talk to me. Bloodrayne had broken it earlier by asking me how Ethan was, like I was going to confess he was still carving her name in his wrist with a fountain pen. I only excused it because of the look on her face when I’d told her he was dating someone else and it had been the highlight of the evening so far. Now she sat behind the drums, sulking, while another vamp kid plucked the bass guitar clumsily.

A group of doe-eyed sophomore and junior girls with curtain bangs had crowded around the stage, looking at each other and “awing” every time Mike’s voice broke. He looked like more of a tool than ever in cuffed skinny jeans, black Toms, and a black jean jacket with the collar popped. Earlier I’d asked him if he was going apply his lip gloss now or in the girl’s bathroom mirror, and then caught him wiping lips on the back of his hand when he thought I wasn’t looking. I tapped my cell phone screen again to check the time. I should have foreseen this and written Mike shorter songs. All of his songs were confessional emo anthems that I guess you didn’t actually need to play the guitar too well to pull off. Now that I saw him playing I could tell my music was a little too high-energy to match the mood. I almost wished I had seen them before; I wouldn’t have tried so hard.

When we’d gotten here Mike had bought me a coffee and a muffin, insisting it was necessary so I fit in. I’d asked him if he thought I ever wanted to fit in anywhere. He shrugged instead of answering and put the muffin in my hand anyway. I’d picked out the blueberries as I finished the coffee. I felt almost giddy though. Everything was so close to working out. The demo would be done in time, and we were going to win the contest. I could feel it in my bones. We were good. And based on the other bands we played before or after and listening to Mike’s TwiShit music, there wasn’t another band in the area that stood a chance.

His set was finally over, the last few songs had drug out. The girls wouldn’t even stop applauding as they packed up their instruments. Like Mike would decide which one to marry based on who clapped the longest. He had given me a notebook to write comments down for him as I listened. I looked down and realized the only thing I’d written was “fags” in bubble letters. I thought about hiding it and telling Mike it was fine. I checked my phone again. Fifteen more minutes and I was done here.

I looked up and saw Mike twirling his hair around his finger as he walked towards me. Over his shoulder I could see two girls trying to goad one another into coming over to talk to him. When he sat down across from me the one snickered and grabbed her friend’s arm to pull her away.

 “Well?” he asked. I tilted the notebook up like I was reading from it.

“You were flat and off-tempo.”  It was probably true.

“When?”

“The whole time.”

“Everyone seemed into it,” he said. He adjusted a studded wristband with a frown as he stared at his hands.

“Yeah. You know how to make ovaries explode. Who cares.”

“I didn’t think it was that bad—”

He looked genuinely upset with himself, so I sighed, “Ok, it was mainly the second verse of the last song.”

He looked up at me with a half-smile. “Those recordings you sent me helped.” His bangs fell over his eyes as he leaned back in his chair, recapturing the same emotive mood he’d had on stage. I looked away.

“Yeah maybe one day you’ll come close to this level of skill,” I said, cracking my knuckles pointedly.

He snickered, “I’d be too afraid of growing side-bangs and scowl lines, per say.”

I flipped my hair away from my eyes. “Yeah because your Urban Outfitter _vintage_ jacket is what it takes to fuck any one of these girls, not the music.”

“Jealous?” He asked, leaning closer to me.

I rolled my eyes and looked at a girl reapplying glitter eyeshadow. “I think I could do better than these high school Hot Topic clones.”

He gave me a weird look, and followed my gaze. “I didn’t mean of me—”

“Just give me the money so I can leave.” I was staring out the window. It looked like it could start snowing any minute. I dug my hands in my pocket preemptively for a cigarette. Whether fifteen minutes had passed or not, I was done here.

He flicked through his wallet for a second, looking down at the uneaten muffin and then back at me. “Here,” he said, putting some bills on the table. It was enough. I grabbed my coat and pushed my way through a group of teenage girls huddled over a phone skimming through pictures of Mike with his eyes closed over the mic.

I’d told Ethan I’d meet him at Benny’s around 10. Even though I was a little early he was already here; leaning over his notebook, with a coffee mug by his elbow. The overhead lights made his skin yellower than usual. For a moment I thought about staying where he couldn’t see me, but I didn’t know for what, so I slid into the booth across from him.

“Where’s Henrietta?” he asked, looking out the window for her car. I’d said she and I were hanging out tonight so I could watch Mike’s band without questions.

“She was tired, she just wanted to go to sleep,” I said. I grabbed his leg under the table and he smiled lightly at me.

“You look tired too.”

I shrugged and accepted the coffee the waitress begrudgingly brought me.

He laced his fingers through mine under the table. “Drink your coffee. I rented _American Psycho_ since you said you hadn’t seen it.” I had mentioned it at the record store a few weeks ago when someone had been looking for the soundtrack. What sort of conformist twat even bought movie soundtracks?

“What are you trying to educate me?” I asked. We’d always shared the same taste in music. But where my interest was overwhelmed by guitarists like Daniel Ash and Johnny Marr, Ethan read Oscar Wilde and collected cult movies.

He looked like he was considering it. “A bit.”

“You’re just a film nerd.” I rolled my eyes. “And I refuse to be your project.” It was another lie, but one that no one minded.

“Then I’m going to stop listening to all those Nick Cave mixes you _accidently_ leave in my car.”

I laughed a bit and leaned back in the booth so our shoulders were touching, trying to finish my coffee quick so we could leave.

 

**xxx.**

Saturday I flicked the switch finalizing the last take of the last song. We’d done it. The recording was finished. “That’s it.” I turned to Ethan. “We recorded it.” He was sitting next to me at the mixing console, and leaned over to kiss my temple.

“Thank god,” Henrietta said. “This studio smells like mold and I’m sick of wasting my Saturdays here.”

“Don’t you get it? We can enter the contest. We did the demo,” I said, spinning in my chair to face her. Georgie grinned as he came back in from carrying his drum set to Henrietta’s car.

“I’m texting Ike now about it,” he said. He flicked a drumstick with one hand while the other held his cellphone.

Meanwhile Henrietta was turning an unlit cigarette over in her fingers. “So does this mean you’ll finally be able to hang out with me again?” Ethan had gone to turn the lights off in the recording booth. He might have been too far to hear her.

“Yeah,” I said quickly. “So I’ll just come back sometime this week to finish up the production stuff and then I’ll send it in.” I said loudly and to no one in particular.

“Then come over this afternoon. You need a haircut anyway.”

“We’re going to the Planetarium tonight,” Ethan reminded me. He was now leaning against the foam soundproofing on the walls with his arms crossed over his chest. He wasn’t looking at me.

“Are you fucking kidding me? You are _always_ together. I hope you realize what a shitty friend you’re being Dylan.”  I swallowed, but my throat was dry.

“Henrietta. Why don’t you and I go get a coffee right now?” I was standing, throwing her coat at her.

“Jesus relax Henrietta,” Ethan said. “You two just hung out last night. You don’t actually have to spend every second together.”

“I’ll pay, come on.” I stood between them, wishing my body were bigger or my voice was louder to stop this from happening, but it was like those word problems in math. Two trains were bound for a head-on collision and there was no stopping it.

“Um, no we didn’t,” Henrietta said, leaning around me to glare at Ethan.

Ethan stood up straighter and stared up at me. “You said you were with her last night.” He sounded resigned, and that was somehow worse. Anger could be worked through, at least.

“I was at work. I forgot. Whatever.” My voice was defensive in a way that was giving up the game more than what I was saying.

“When? I went to Harbucks looking for you because you never answer your phone anymore.” I didn’t turn to look at her. Ethan just stared at me from across the room and I hoped my face said something useful that I couldn’t think of. He shrugged and I didn’t know what it meant.

“Henrietta just shut up. Christ you don’t own me.”

“Um. Okay. How about you say that to him,” she said, pointing at Ethan. “Since you’re skipping school half of the week to be with him.” I clenched my eyes shut. I wished I could turn back time and talk to Henrietta this morning. Say anything I had to so I could have stopped this from happening.

“Henrietta, shut the fuck up,” I said. My face was hot, as I turned away from both of them and looked over at Georgie who broke eye contact immediately.

“He hasn’t been skipping to hang out with me.” Ethan was standing closer now.  He grabbed my wrist, making me look at him. “Skipping school for what?” I couldn’t read his tone anymore. I didn’t know if I’d be able to read my own. Everything was coming apart so fast.

“I needed money to pay for this,” I shrugged, pulling my arm from his grasp. So they knew. So what. The demo was finished. I had to keep that in mind. It had paid off. “I didn’t want anyone to feel guilty about it. What does it matter? It’s over now.”

He almost looked relieved for a second, before another thought occurred to him. “So where were you last night then when you lied about being at work?” I didn’t want to talk about Mike. Henrietta would think it was shameful to have begged for work from him to get some money. And maybe it had been, but I wasn’t dealing in black and white situations. Henrietta didn’t appreciate complexities. Or sacrifice. Or work.

“I don’t know. What does it matter?” I looked over at the door by Georgie. I thought about walking out. Catching a bus back home and waiting until this blew over. Ethan followed my gaze.

“No,” he said, coming closer to me again. “I want to know where you were when you lied directly to my face about it.” He was clearly angry now, but I was angrier. How could anyone say I was wrong when I got the results we all had been depending on? It was so easy to look down on me when they were so above it. When nothing was depending on them having to do a goddamn thing.

“I couldn’t make enough money from Harbucks!” They had to have known. They weren’t idiots.

“So what? You got another job?” Georgie asked. I had forgotten he was even in the room. I glared at him and he shrunk back against the wall.

“You know, sometimes I feel like I’m the only one who is willing to do what is needed for our band. This isn’t a fucking hobby you know. This is our lives!” Henrietta snorted. I could feel my nostrils flare as I breathed in. It wasn’t fair that I had to care so much more deeply than the rest of them. That I had to be the only one who even gave a shit about our success.

Ethan put his hands up like he wouldn’t begin to accept that line of defense. Like he wouldn’t accept my anger. “What did you _need_ to do?”

I bet he thought I was sucking dick for money. I could tell by the look he was giving me. Like his worst opinion about me was being confirmed. “What does it matter! The album is done! I paid for it. No one else had to worry about money.” I suddenly felt tired. Exhausted. It was easy to see that no one was on my side or even trying to understand.

“It matters because you lied to me. Fucking repeatedly! For weeks! So be honest for just one minute and tell me what else have you been doing.” I wished that Henrietta and Georgie would leave. This really had nothing to do with them. I could make Ethan see reason if we didn’t have to be putting on this show for the two voyeurs.

“It won’t seem like such a big deal when we have a record contract.” I chewed on the edge of my thumbnail and stared at the floor. I could feel Henrietta and Georgie were staring at me still. There was nowhere I could look and nowhere I could go. So I had to cling to what I knew.

“Dylan,” he yelled making me look up at him. “Just tell me where you’ve been, that’s all.”

I stared at him blankly for a moment. I wanted to tell him. It wasn’t that big of a deal. But I already knew he’d think it was by the way he was looking at me now. When I didn’t say anything he shook his head and pulled his cigarettes from his pocket.

“What are you so quick to doubt me always?” I said, resisting the urge to tell him to put his cigarette out while we were in the studio. “Anyway can’t you see that Henrietta is just trying to cause an argument because she’s fucking bored and there’s nothing to eat or smoke?”

She shook her head, her lips curled back in a snarl. “Don’t even fucking start, Dylan. The only reason you two are together is because I made it happen. Because I told you to.” I looked at Ethan to gauge his reaction. He wasn’t moving or looking at me. I couldn’t even see his chest move to breathe.

“What do you mean?” He said in a dead monotone like he couldn’t possibly be surprised by anything else horrible I’d done.

“Oh you didn’t tell him?” Henrietta sounded almost pleased. “Just that I thought I’d be a good person and trick Dylan into being with you. I made him hang out with you. I told him to put his head on your shoulder. I even dressed him up for you. I told him it’d be a funny joke to see you pining after him. Well. Whose the joke on now? Me. Because everyone has someone except for me.”  She deserved it, if this was how she treated her friends.

He looked at her for a moment, the cigarette hanging loosely from his lips before he turned to me. I could tell he was struggling to keep his indifferent expression across his face in front of Georgie and Henrietta, maybe in front of me too now.

“Is it true?” he said to me, sounding distant. I couldn’t find the words to say that it wasn’t what Henrietta was implying.

I looked back at him. I couldn’t have prepared for this. I couldn’t have been ready to fix everything at once. I pulled at the edges of my sleeves as I watched his shoulders rise and fall.

“I’m done.” He grabbed his coat and scarf, not bothering to put them on, so they both just drug on the floor.  

Henrietta rolled her eyes as he walked past her “Oh, I was worried it wasn’t all about _Ethan_ for once,” she turned, yelling at him as he pushed the door open. “But of course he would find a way!”

When it slammed shut I took a step back.

“Why would you do that?” I said, pushing my bangs off my face, “you fucking bitch.”

“What? I didn’t make you lie to him. I didn’t know there was anything to lie about because you never even talk to me anymore. Fuck, you should have told me.” I couldn’t stand the way she was sitting there so justified.

“Yeah I can really count on you.” I wanted to put my fists in my hair and pull. Anything to distract me from what had just happened. When had everyone decided to ruin this for me?

“I would have covered up for you!” I wanted to laugh. It was so easy to say things like that.

“Then why the fuck would you tell him about the bet? Why would you even be thinking about it?”

“I’m upset because you never fucking hang out with me anymore! I sat outside your house the last two days to give you a ride to school. You couldn’t even bother to text me to tell me that Ethan was bringing you.” She hadn’t texted me either. She probably stopped for two minutes, idling while she changed her CDs before heading to school without me.

“So that’s worth ruining my relationship over!? Gas money?!” I knew it was unfair as soon as I said it, but I was glad. I wanted her to feel the frustration of undeserved accusations.

“You don’t get it! You’re so selfish Dylan! You know you’re my only friend.” It was too late for her to be trying the sympathy card. I wasn’t buying it.

“Wow, thanks,” Georgie mumbled.

“Just go! Leave! I fucking can’t look at you!” It did feel good to tell the truth about that at least. How could she call herself my friend one breath after having run off my boyfriend? It wasn’t fair that she be forgiven so quickly or at all.

“Whatever.” She grabbed her keys, keeping her head down as she went towards the door. 

Georgie looked over at me as he unwilling followed behind her. “She’s my ride. I guess.”

I reached for the chair I’d been sitting at minutes before and put my elbows on the mixing console. I could fix this. I’d just have to tell Ethan about Mike. It was too hard to say it out loud with Henrietta and Georgie looking at me. I’d explain everything later. Even the bet. I noticed how Henrietta left out the part where she fucking poured GHB in my drink. Ethan just needed a cigarette and some space. I’d walk over to his apartment soon. But the clock against the wall told me that I’d booked the studio for another 45 minutes. I felt like Ethan’s scarf dragging on the floor as I began fiddling with the different knobs.

If everyone wanted to act like I’d committed some heinous crime then let them. I’d sit here and start post-production on our demo. The person who didn’t storm out was typically the most rational one. And anyway, I couldn’t help but thinking that today’s fight might make a good story for the Alternative Press write-up after we’ve won.

 


	9. Chapter 9

_People are always ruining things for you._

_—J. D. Salinger_

**x.**

The streets were too crowded on the walk to Ethan's apartment. I keep crossing through backed-up traffic, catching bits and pieces of lyrics blasting from car radios, but never enough to put a name to a song. I'd waited 45 minutes exactly before walking the hour it took me to get to here. I could have taken the bus, but I needed time to smoke. A cigarette hung from my fingers, and I imagined a trail of ash led clear from the door of the studio to my shoes.

It would be easier to have a rational discussion now that Henrietta wasn't in the same room, interjecting between every other word something damning. As I turned onto his street, I tried calling him, but he wasn't answering his cellphone. The front door of the apartment building was locked. I sat on the curb outside until one of his neighbors carrying in groceries held the door open for me behind her with a sad smile on her face. I knew I hadn't seen her before this moment. I wondered if I looked particularly trustworthy or if I looked harmless and which I preferred.

I realized now that I'd never had to knock on his door before because we'd always come here together. It was strange to hear him moving inside while I stood out here like a stranger.

When he opened the door he stayed in the doorway, blocking me from going further. His eyes were red and raw as he stared down at me. I bit my lip and tried to remember anything I had thought would make this better while I'd been sitting in the studio, attempting to forget how Ethan's face had tightened before he had left.

"What." His voice broke over the word harshly. Before this moment it never occurred to me that Ethan could cry. In the nine years I'd known him, the closest I'd seen him come to breaking down was the day his mom threatened to drink a bottle of bleach because her ex-boyfriend stole her credit cards. Ethan had been fourteen. After she'd been taken to the hospital by a neighbor for observation we'd smoked an entire pack of cigarettes and threw the filters off the bridge into Stark's Pond. I remember that the ducks kept thinking we were feeding them bread so after a while I just stubbed mine into the railing and left them by my knees. Ethan had been sniffing intermittently while we sat there, but by the time we stood to leave the only thing that was any different was that he was hunched over slightly more than usual. I hadn't known what to say then, either.

I looked down at a stain on the flattened hallway carpet. Something had splattered here where I stood now a long time ago judging from the callused black surface. Maybe before I was born. "We should talk," I said slowly, trying to buy some more time while I urged my brain to cooperate.

"I'm sure you have better things to do. Don't bother lying about what they are." Each of his words seemed to take more effort to say than the last. Like he hadn't slept in a week and standing in the hallway with me was the last thing between him and a bed.

"Ethan, please. Let me explain." His fingers were gripping the door so hard his knuckles were white. I never realized how long his fingers were until this moment, thin and bony next to the blistering wood of the apartment door.

"Why? So you have something else to laugh about with Henrietta? You've already made a fool of me. Why are you here; what's in it for you in pretending to care about me anymore?" He'd gotten quieter at the end, but his voice was still steely and sharp at the edges.

"What?" It was hard to follow his logic when it was clear he'd contrived the most painful explanation for everything in his mind. I could almost see the betrayal in the way his lips were stretched. I shouldn't have let him leave the studio; he'd obviously spent the last two hours warping everything Henrietta had said in his mind. The hall light overhead flickered and for a second I thought someone was taking our picture, like we'd been caught in some lewd act.

"Did you two even break up?" It took me a minute to realize he meant me and Henrietta. I shook my head.

"I was never dating Henrietta." I felt stupid even having to say it.

He just shrugged like maybe that was true. The browns of his eyes looked heavy now, like they were coins that might drop to the ground if he blinked. I wished he would blink so I would be convinced that wouldn't happen. He just stood there, but I didn't know what he was waiting for. I couldn't pick the right words.

"Ethan, I'm gay." This was probably the first time I'd had to say so out loud. It didn't make it feel more true though. It felt just as true when Henrietta called me a fag after I'd ask to borrow her nail polish remover. Or when my mouth was slotted over Ethan's.

"Are you? What do I know, right?" he asked through a laugh. It was hollow. I wanted to kiss him now. To prove it. To force him to think of me as a person again, and not just a vehicle to make him feel bad.

"What did you think? That I was having sex with you as some sort of elaborate joke?" It seemed like a solid point. When I thought about how we'd lay in bed holding onto one another, warm and safe under his flannel blankets.

"I don't know Dylan; I've watched you offer blow-jobs for less. What was it—$30 worth of drinks."

It felt like it was taking all my energy to just stay standing for a second as I let the words hit me. Let them gather at the back of my throat, hot and acidic. I pulled my bangs over my face and looked at the floor, swallowing thickly before trying again.

"Henrietta knew we both had feelings for each other. So she put us in situations where we could be together. I realized after I put my head on your shoulder how much I wanted to be with you and asked her to help. That's all she did. It wasn't a joke. No one was laughing at you. It ended when we got together. And everything I've felt for you has been real." It was possibly the truest thing I had ever said. If I could only ever say one thing again, that would be it.

"Oh, okay. I can trust what's  _real_  coming from you. Thanks for the reassurance." I didn't know how to talk to this Ethan. I'd never had to before.

"It's what happened," I said, my shoulders rising around my ears. I could see his scarf on the floor behind his legs. I wished I could switch places with it. I wished I could lie on the floor of his apartment unneeded instead of here in the hallway, hated.

"If that's true than why didn't you ever tell me? We've been together over a month and you couldn't find a time to slip in— _oh by the way, funny story; Henrietta tricked me into liking you._ " It was like he had already had this conversation without me. He had a response to tear down my defenses before I had even thought of them.

"But she didn't. I've always felt this way." He rolled his eyes at the word 'always.' Tears of frustration were forming in my eyes and I stared at the fading purple of my shoes, at the busted ends of my shoestrings, frayed and matted. "I'm sorry. I should have told you about it though, you're right. I don't even know why I didn't. I guess I was just so happy it was happening at all that I sort of forgot how it started." I forgave myself this bit of a lie as soon as I'd said it. I'd never planned on telling Ethan. Clearly the knowledge wasn't doing anyone any good, and I'd almost forgotten about the laughable excuse for a set up that Henrietta had come up with in the first place.

I glanced up at him and for a moment, I thought maybe everything could be okay. He looked like he almost wanted to reach out for me. I wished he would and we could hold each other until we both calmed down and talk everything out on the floor of his living room. We could take turns saying things we didn't know about each other until we'd run out of secrets. I'd even tell him about my stepdad. About the bruise hidden by my hair right now.

"Ethan I've never done anything to try and hurt you. What can I say to prove that I mean it?"

I saw him let go of the doorframe and I thought he really was going to grab my shoulder and pull me towards him. But instead he crossed his arms and let out the breath he'd been holding. "Tell me where you've been getting extra money from."

"Can I just come in?" I asked. I watched his hand on the door hopefully. I thought if I could just take off my coat. If he could just see me more. Maybe he'd remember who I was. Not some month-long fling but his best friend since the 4th grade. The person who flicked filters off the bridge at Stark's Pond, the person he skipped school with to smoke in the alley, the person he had started a band with to play at a shitty school talent show.

"Tell me." He was looking at me so exhausted, so sad, like he was asking me to tell him how much longer until we got to our destination. How much longer until we could stop moving.

I took a breath and wished the truth were something else. Something less like anything Ethan and I had spent time doing together. "I called Mike Makowski—"

" _Oh my god_." And his expression was closed again. And I could tell it was really over now.

"I wasn't even giving him my best songs," I said meekly. A muscle in his cheek twitched from how hard he was clenching his jaw. I might have been able to push through the door, if I caught him by surprise, but I was beginning to accept that I wasn't going to be able to convince him that this didn't have to be a battle that one of us had to lose.

"What do you mean?"

"The music I wrote for his band. It wasn't that great." Mike couldn't play anything better, at least.

He looked confused for a moment. "You were writing music for his band? What the fuck." He played with his earring for a moment, staring blankly down the hall behind me. Somewhere in the building a baby was crying and someone turned the volume of their TV up. "I don't get it. Do you regularly call up Mike Makowski to chat?" I shrugged because shaking my head no made my hair pull uncomfortably at the bruise lurking on the back of my head.

"He offered to pay me for songs in study hall last year and gave me his number." If I shrugged enough, maybe Ethan could subconsciously be convinced that he was blowing everything out of proportion. I couldn't be as devious as Ethan was implying, and he had to have known it.

He repeated the words under his breath and then scrunched his nose. "And you just kept it. All this time."

"I don't know, I guess." I didn't understand why we couldn't laugh this off. Why we couldn't call Mike Makowski incompetent and I could tell him how Mike perpetually drew x's on his hands like a giant douche.

"So you've been lying about where you are to me. So you can be with Mike Makowski and write songs with Mike Makowski?" His voice got higher at the end.

" _For money_ ," I added, but now that he was saying the words like that, I could see how it didn't matter.

"What else did you do with Mike  _for money_?" He straightened up now. And I felt shorter next to him than I did even barefoot. It felt like he could crush me with his thumb if he wanted. Maybe there was a parallel conversation happening right now using dog whistles that was taking my responses and making them worse. Making Ethan believe the worst in me.

"Jesus, Ethan. Nothing!" I could see that I'd have to tell him what I thought he must have already known. "I've never done anything with anyone else. Is that what you want me to tell you, that I was a stupid little virgin before you? God I never even kissed anyone else. And I've never wanted to," I said, taking a shaky breath, afraid to look at him. Afraid he was laughing.

"You're lying or you're stupid. Probably both." I swallowed. Maybe laughing would have been better. Maybe someone smarter could say something to convince Ethan how much I loved him and how sorry I was. The pointed toes of his boots were sharp against the floor. I thought of how they used to tap against my creepers. How he'd find little ways to touch me, to love me. I didn't want to listen to him stand here like this and tear everything up. "Wake up Dylan. Mike Makowski isn't paying you for your music. He's paying you for your company. He wants to fuck you, that's all." I don't know why the words  _that's all_ hurt the worst. Like I'd had some inflated opinion of myself. Like I was a kid who had tried to help set the table but had given everyone two forks instead. But everyone kept eating their soup with them because they didn't want to hurt my feelings and Ethan was finally setting me straight.

"He wanted me to write songs for his band," I said quietly and with effort. It was nice to know what Ethan thought I was worth though. The only thing I knew I was good at wasn't good enough for him. I had to be fucking someone too. Maybe that's what he actually saw in me; maybe the truth was coming out. I felt sick.

He sighed like I was making this unnecessarily hard for him and pushed his hair away from his face. "I don't understand why you didn't just tell me that you didn't have enough money."

I had to take a minute to remember my own reasoning to be able to answer the question. It all seemed so foreign now. I could barely remember what I'd ever wanted other than him. "I thought you'd tell me that it wasn't worth it. That we'd have to wait for another contest. I thought you might have refused to record it."

"Of course I would have! Jesus fucking Christ! Did you ever doubt for a moment I wouldn't have wanted you to virtually drop out of high school and work a minimum wage job to pay for a hastily put together demo for a contest we're never going to fucking win?"

"We might win," I said, taking a step away from him. I didn't want to look him in the eye anymore, or stare down like he'd finally beaten me. Instead I watched as he ran his tongue over his lips and shook his head.

"That's not even the point. The point is Dylan, you didn't even ask me. You jumped straight into being unbelievably deceptive about it. What does that say about you?" I didn't know. I wondered if he did, if he could see all the flaws in my personality like gashes up and down my arms.

"I just thought the band—"

"Fuck the band. I'm done." He said it like fact. Not like it was something he was deciding. Not like something that could ever be changed. "And I'm done with this." I knew  _this_  meant  _you_. I wondered why he phrased it like that. Like our relationship was one-sided and I carried it around with me.

"Ethan—"

But he put his hand up and I closed my lips and stared at it, at how his fingers were shaking against one another. "Was it worth it?"

Of course it wasn't. But I didn't realize it wasn't a rhetorical question until the door shut in my face. Tears itched down my cheeks as I knocked again lightly. I'd never even made it inside. That's how much my words were worth.

I heard the latch slide over the lock and I took a deep breath and wiped at my face with my sleeve. If he opened the door I'd explain to him that I'd never seen it as a choice. The band was just a way for us all to stay together. It always had been.

My knees felt like they would give out under me as I turned and stared at the other end of the hall. I wondered how I was still breathing when the air was so shallow now.

I wasn't even sure if I was the same person walking through the front door of my house as the one that had left this morning. There must be some scar on my body somewhere from where Ethan had been ripped away, or maybe a bullet hole. Something. I couldn't have been left unmarked when it hurt this bad.

I walked to my room and shut the door, curling up in my bed. But I couldn't sleep. Every half hour I'd wake up and check my phone in case he'd called, knowing he wouldn't, but having to check anyway. One time I'd dreamed he had and kept scrolling through my call log. I got out of bed after that.

I smoked a pack of cigarettes out the window of my room through the night until it was time to get dressed for work. I listened to every song that ever reminded me of Ethan until I got to the White Stripes on my iPod and started over again with Bauhaus. Eventually I just kept hitting repeat on  _I Know It's Over_ , until I was crying again, choking a little into my cigarette, and wishing that I would have been better prepared to hold onto the only good thing in my life.

 

**xx.**

I was glad for the smallest amount of distraction offered by work on Sunday. After my shift was over I sat at a back table trying to catch up on homework until the store closed. My books took up the entire table, and my elbow hit the wall as I tapped my pencil against my knuckles. Normally I would have gone to Benny's. But I didn't want to risk seeing any of them. It shouldn't feel like hiding out because I worked here. Because I didn't have a car and Benny's was a thirty minute walk. But it still did.

My stomach burned from chugging so much coffee, but the act of eating seemed impossible. Just pulling my unwashed polo shirt over my head this morning seemed to take all of my strength. I had even sat on my bed afterwards from the effort. I knew I was fine, that my body didn't know what had happened to it.

Across the café I saw Wendy Testaburger pointing at something in a copy of  _The Sound and the Fury_  as Stan Marsh looked over her shoulder. His hand was on her back; I bet he didn't even realize he was playing with her hair like that. Stan Marsh would never lie to her. I could tell by the way he was looking at her now as she read a line. The biggest argument they'd gotten into was who loved whom the most. I bet when he told her he loved her she'd said it right back. Not just sat there like I had. Ethan was right, I  _was_  stupid. Stan must have felt me staring because he turned around and gave me a half-wave. I tried to smile but then ducked my head back down at my English book when it became clear it wasn't happening.

By the time I got home it was dark and I hadn't really gotten that much schoolwork done. The house smelled like a gross mixture of meatloaf and laundry detergent and I opened a window. I toed off my shoes before sitting on the sofa and pulled my English book back out. I was supposed to be writing a poem where I included a simile and a metaphor. Normally I'd be glad for the assignment where I was graded on creativity and not my ability to follow directions. But it felt like torture to try and put the black curtain of emotion I felt into words. To try and hone it into something meaningful when there wasn't any meaning in any of it. In the end I wrote some shit about how success was a façade and that no matter what strides you seemed to be making toward a goal you were always just inches from where you started. I thought my English teacher might appreciate it. She liked me. Well, she remembered my name. Which in high school, and I guess in the rest of life too, was the same thing.

When the poem was done, I sat it aside and pulled out a worksheet I'd missed one of the days I'd skipped. I wanted to get caught up on these assignments. I was sure if I could just do something right, I might feel better. And I didn't feel like sleeping anyway.

I stood in the kitchen waiting for coffee to brew when I heard my stepdad come in the front door. I heard him throw down his coat as his work boots made heavy steps through the kitchen. My shoulders stiffened. I knew he was behind me but I kept watching the coffee drip into the pot.

"Move," he said, shoving me away from the cupboard he needed in. I tripped a bit over my feet but caught myself, and stood out of his way as I watched him pull out a box of stale crackers. He looked over at me, unsatisfied. I stared at his chest where there were three grease stains doting the fabric of his shirt. They almost seemed purposeful.

"What are you looking at?"

I froze before shrugging and turning back to the coffee slowly. He sat the box back on the counter with enough force that it fell over.

"Well?" It came out as a grumble that I barely recognized as a word.

"Nothing, I'm sorry," I mumbled. I was saying it a lot lately. I wasn't even sure which time it'd sounded more desperate; here or in Ethan's doorway. I could get the coffee later, or not at all. I was probably drinking too much coffee. I started walking backwards out of the kitchen as he came closer to me. His eyes were spaced too close together, and they seemed hazy, like a film was over them. I thought if I could just make the film go away, he'd understand me. Maybe better than anyone. But he kept coming closer, with that same dead expression across his face and I couldn't change anything about him or about this or about anything. I wanted to know how many people did have control over their lives. Or was everyone acting as a victim of circumstance.

"I just want to do my homework." I was trying to appeal to some rational part of him that probably didn't exist. I thought about getting my English book for evidence, but he was standing by the sofa. So I kept walking towards my room, watching him following me. Trying to act like this was fine, that I didn't know what he wanted. That we weren't both waiting for the starting pistol to go off.

Once I was in the hallway I turned around and ran towards the door to my room. Thinking of the lock. Thinking of the window. But he ran behind me, and grabbed the back of my cardigan. I snapped towards him, my feet falling under me. He tried to pull me up but the sleeve started to rip. And I couldn't help but feel a zing of exhilaration that it was this cardigan because it already had a hole in the sleeve. It pissed him off though, like I'd ripped it on purpose and he grabbed my arm harder, pulling me up straighter until he could reach my neck. He walked us the rest of the way into my room with one hand around my neck and the other on my arm as I breathed in strangled gasps; my feet fumbling to stay on the carpet to relieve some of the pressure. I was grabbing at picture frames along the walls, not knowing why. Maybe I just wanted something in my hands too.

I couldn't see anything but the hair poking out of the cuffs of his shirt, the cheap wristwatch my mom had given him last Christmas. I had the fingers of one hand wrapped around his other wrist, not even trying to pull him off, just holding on. I was coughing now, gagging, and he let me go. I must have blacked out for just a second because I was falling against my bed when I caught myself. I didn't even see his fist swing back. But it cracked me against the jaw and sent me sprawling into the wall behind my bed. I lay there clutching my face, wondering how it could still feel the same, how it could still be okay when it felt like it'd broken in twenty different places and come back together all wrong . I could taste blood from where my teeth cut my gums. And I was crying without tears as I was breathing, wondering what was going to happen next. If the dead expression was still on his face, I was too afraid to look.

I hoped that he was done now, that he was satisfied. I started to wonder what I'd done to deserve this, so maybe I could say the right words to apologize for it. But I couldn't think of anything before the front door was being opened and I knew he heard it too, because he shut the door to my room behind him. My mom was in the kitchen asking him if the cable bill had come as I continued to lie there listening to my own breath coming in sharp, quick bursts.

There wasn't anyone to call this time. I spit the watery blood onto my sheets, trying to calm down. I was trapped here. In this room. In this house. In this town. I rubbed a knuckle against the edge of my lip and could feel the blood swelling under the surface.

The only ticket out I'd ever had was the band.

I rolled over so I didn't have to look at the blood anymore. I still had the band, kind of. The demo was recorded. Whether Ethan or Henrietta cared or not. I could finish it without them. We could still win. I'd written eight solid songs that are recorded. And even though I should have been honest with Ethan about it, and I regretted it, I couldn't regret that the demo was done. I didn't regret that I could still save us all. I laughed a little to myself as I slid off my bed and onto the floor. In the mirror facing me I stared at the cracked side of my lip and the blood already clotting there.

I wanted my guitar back. I had my acoustic guitar sitting in the corner of my room. But that wasn't the one I'd played at shows, or recorded the demo with. My red guitar was sitting in Henrietta's garage. It'd already been packed in her car when she'd left yesterday. I grabbed Ethan's hoodie that I keep balled up next to my pillow to sleep with and replaced my ripped cardigan with it. I sat on my bed, stuffing my hands into the pockets of the hoodie, trying to imagine Ethan's hands in the pockets. Trying to imagine Ethan's curls touching the hood, as I pulled it over my face. Ethan would never let anyone hit him.

I snuck out the back door, staring hard at the back of my step-dad's TV illuminated head as I passed, wrapping an arm around myself before I headed towards her house.

According to my nearly dead phone that I used like a flashlight it was almost midnight by the time I was standing outside the back entrance to Henrietta's garage. It was the first time I'd ever been glad her parents were trusting enough to keep this door unlocked, in spite of the fact that over $1,000 worth of instruments were kept here. I knocked into her dad's riding mower as I took five steps inside the door, cursing in the dark as I fumbled towards the light switch.

My guitar was sitting in the same corner it was always kept in, like maybe it'd never been moved at all. I unzipped the case and ran a finger over its glossy surface.

"Did you think I'd broken it?" Henrietta asked, making me jump back.

I was surprised at how much effort it took to raise my head and look at her.

"I downright amazed you didn't." She was standing in the doorway between her house and the garage in sweatpants and a black tank top. She looked especially pale under the dull garage light with all of her makeup wiped off.

I zipped my case back up and strapped it to my back. I needed to get out of here, my creepers smacked against the frozen concrete as I walked back towards the door, more in control of my body than I'd felt since finishing recording. Had that really been yesterday? I felt thirty years older. I could feel it in my creaking joints.

"So Mike Makowski? Really Dylan?" I could tell she was trying to sound indignant. But her tone was more desperate than anything else. That she didn't have more to say about it was more telling than she could have anticipated.

At first I kept walking. But the only way she'd know anything about Mike was if she'd spoken to Ethan. When I turned back around she was frowning, shifting her weight onto her other foot. I didn't respond because I knew she couldn't stand the silence.

"I went to see Ethan," she explained, sitting on the stoop of the door, her bare feet curled under her legs. She squinted at me for a minute before she continued. "Come here," she said. "Are you bleeding?"

I curled my fingers into my palms to resist the urge to raise my hand to my face, it would be the signal she was clearly waiting for to come swaddle me between her boobs and pretend that everything between us was fine now. But I stayed where I was and sucked in the corner of my lip that had started to swell. "For what?" I tasted blood again, or still.

"Huh?" she was tilting her head a bit like she was trying to decide if the light was playing tricks on her. She looked like a dog that didn't understand how to sit.

"Why did you go to his apartment?" I said it loud and slow. She looked back down now at the mat she was sitting on. It said  _Wipe Your Paws_  even though Henrietta's mom had never allowed them to have any pets. Next to her, Georgie's drumset sat, still packed up. I wished you could pack up people too. Keep them in your garage until you needed them once a week.

"I needed to explain what actually happened. But he's so convinced that everyone is against him, it was like talking to lanky wall." She worked her fingers through a snarl in her hair.

"So you told him it wasn't a joke?" It slipped out before my brain even really processed what she'd said. I knew whatever she had said to Ethan it hadn't convinced him I was worth his time. He would have talked to me if it had. I didn't want to give whatever it was Henrietta thought she could get through her acts of contrition.

"After I convinced him that you hadn't sent me there. Like I'd ever be anyone's puppet. Fuck." She rolled her eyes like Ethan was standing across from her skeptically right now. Like we were just hanging out in her bedroom passing joints two months ago. "I said that I knew you two had been in love with one another for years. That he needed to open his eyes and realize he isn't actually undesirable. That some people might find things like his judgmental eyes attractive, people like you. As hard as it was for me tell him that."

"But he didn't care." I could imagine Ethan half-listening to her as he tugged on his earring. Had she gotten further than his front door to say all this?

"He said it didn't matter. That you'd lied to him about skipping school and about Mike and that was enough to never trust you and blah blah blah. You know how he talks." She paused and looked at me for a second, unsure. "He also said that maybe you'd…"

"I didn't!" It felt like a punch to the stomach every time I had to deny it. And I had to deny it or I might start to believe that it was true.

"Don't you think I told him that?" She said, sounding betrayed. "You love him, I know it, Georgie knows it. You know it. He's the only one that's too blinded by his own fucking insecurities. Fuck his abandonment daddy issues that keep him from accepting it. "

The kitchen light came on under the crack in the door and she opened it. "Fuck off Bradley," she yelled. She waited until the light flicked back off before she pulled the door shut. "Anyway, Mike is straight." Her chin was tilted up. Henrietta was always so sure she knew everything.

"Too bad it doesn't fucking matter what you think," I said, blowing a cloud of smoke into the air between us. I guess if that's what Ethan's opinion of me was, then that's probably the opinion I'd earned. I picked up my guitar and held it tight against my side. "I'll be back for my amp tomorrow."

"Let me drive you." She was suddenly standing. Henrietta rarely spoke like this. Pleading instead of telling. I was sure it was supposed to affect me. It didn't. I shook my head as I walked out the door making a smokey z in the air from the cigarette between my lips. I didn't want even an ounce of her guilt absolved because of a five-minute car ride.

"What about the band?" she said. When I looked back she was standing barefoot over an oil stain on the garage floor. I was afraid she was trying to get close enough to see my face before I left. I ducked my chin down hiding my face under the fabric of Ethan's hoodie, sucking on my cigarette to make it look casual.

"No singer." The words felt easier to say than  _no Ethan_. She must have thought so too because she glanced at the microphone stand pushed against the wall. I couldn't be here anymore. I stepped carefully around her dad's mower on my way out the door.

There was no one on the streets as I walked back to my house. Nothing else to focus on but the sound of my feet hitting the pavement and the weight of the guitar on my back.

It was easier being a kid, hanging out at Henrietta's without needing some excuse like getting stoned or having band practice. But I guess back then we'd all say we were meeting up for our writing group, because we were too cool to call one another friends. Eventually Henrietta's mom just started insisting that we spend the night after it would get too dark and it was obvious none of our parents were coming to pick us up. Ethan's mom would be too stoned on pills to drive a car, my mom would be working the night shift, and Georgie just never told his parents where he was going. Even though we'd roll our eyes with Henrietta at the invitation, I think Ethan and I both secretly loved being around a mom who made us cookies, who told us we were too skinny and put extra slices of pizza on our plates.

We'd all claim to be insomniacs, and the first one asleep was the biggest conformist as we'd lay on the throw rugs of Henrietta's room. Sometimes we'd read our own poetry, and sometimes we'd read about satanic cults and  _the Necronomicon_  until Henrietta and Georgie fell asleep.

Ethan and I would take turns reading ghost stories to one another. Once I'd gotten scared and told him that I was too tired to keep listening. He'd called me a pussy and rolled his eyes, but he didn't read any more of it. I'd pulled Henrietta's Jack Skeleton sleeping back up to my chin and stared blankly at the wall of her room, making sure all the shadows stayed put.

I'd jumped when I heard him shut the book, and hoped he hadn't noticed it. I was always so afraid that Ethan would think I wasn't hardened or cynical or disenfranchised enough to be his friend. But that night he'd lain down next to me, even though he'd argued with Henrietta until she'd agreed that he could sleep on her bed since she was sharing her parent's air mattress with Georgie. And he'd unlatched my fingers from where they were gripping the sleeping bag and repositioned them between his fingers. I'd never opened my eyes, afraid that I would break some spell and he'd stop. In the morning he was sleeping on Henrietta's bed and I'd always wondered, since I was 10 years, old if that moment ever happened. But tonight, walking home, without Henrietta, without Georgie, without him, only now did I think that it definitely never had. It had been a dream, maybe like winning this contest, so important and massive only to me; an illusion I'd made up to comfort myself against monsters all over again.


	10. Chapter 10

_I know what "nothing" means, and keep on playing._

  _— Joan Didion_

**x.**

“He said to not treat me like I’m the child of your divorce.” Georgie had looked pleased to be saying it. He'd always liked Ethan better than me. It’d taken me two hours to convince him to call Ethan at all. “And he’s not doing it.”

It’d been three weeks since I’d seen or spoken with Ethan. He wouldn’t answer my phone calls. I couldn’t tell Georgie how every time I called and Ethan didn’t answer, especially when it went to voicemail too quickly, I had to shut my eyes and listen to the whole message through to the beep, even though it was just a computer reading me the digits of his number. And when I walked the hour it took to get to his apartment building, he wouldn’t come to the door. Sometimes I couldn’t even get in, and would have to justify it with sitting on the curb to smoke a cigarette or five before leaving again.

I’d looked away from Georgie, clenching my jaw. I’d gotten the phone call a few days ago that we’d made it through the next phase of the contest. It meant an impromptu interview with record executives this Saturday in Denver. We had to impress them if we wanted to move onto the next stage of the competition. I thought I had prepared myself for this; that Ethan wouldn’t want to ride up in the same car as me. That he would refuse to look at me.  But I hadn’t been prepared for a blanket refusal to go. I snatched Georgie’s phone and called him back.

“Georgie just tell him to fuck off.” For the last three weeks I’d been listening to our demo just to hear his voice. I was surprised to hear it say something new.

“It’s me,” I’d bitten the two words out. “It’s really stupid of you to use the band to hurt me. Your work—you _art_ is being acknowledged. You’d be making a huge mistake not to be there.” I’d said it one long breath, half-convinced he’d hung up before I’d finished.

"It's so refreshing to hear you talk about the _band_." He’d sighed and taken a breath before adding softly, “don’t have other people call me for you.”

I’d waited a beat for the rest. But it hadn’t come. He wasn’t even listening. Not really. I’d wanted to reach through the phone and clamp my hands on his shoulders and force him to hear me when I told him that he was fucking himself over. That he was robbing all of us. This was the last chance any of us had. If we lost, I wouldn’t have the chance to talk Ethan around, that much had become startlingly clear. For a quick, breathless moment I’d wished he had never told me about the contest. The band had to be successful to keep us together, I knew that, but this was so much worse than playing small gigs and hoping to be noticed.

“You don’t answer when I call.” I’d said it through gritted teeth because it seemed less tragic now and more childish. I looked up and saw Georgie watching me. I’d turned my back to him, even though I was sure everything I felt about Ethan had been written all over my face for weeks.

“Because I have nothing to say to you.” His words had cut in the same part of my chest that had been aching for the past three weeks. I could see now why breaking up with me wasn’t enough for him. He couldn’t be sure he could hurt me that way because he didn’t know how much he meant to me. But he knew how much the band meant. All I could do was curl my fingers tighter around the phone, wishing it was his wrist.

“Ethan, it doesn’t have to be this bad.” I’d been half-delirious with emotion, not knowing what I meant or if he heard it. When there wasn’t a response I’d pulled the phone away and saw the call had been ended. It had felt like the breath had been knocked out of me.

I still hadn't entirely gotten over the conversation. But Ethan's indifference to me felt like a fever I was learning to live with. It was Saturday now and I was sitting in the passenger seat of Henrietta's car. I'd told her she was driving us, knowing she'd be pleased that I wanted anything from her at all. We made it to Denver an hour before the interview, and were double-parked on a side street.

“You’re sure he’s working now?” I asked Georgie, pinning him with my gaze through the rearview mirror.

“Yeah. But I don’t think you should do this.” His blue eyes lacked the kind of appeal they might have once had. Now he just seemed like a kid afraid of falling out of favor with his big brother.

“Let him do what he wants Georgie,” Henrietta sneered before turning to me. “Just be back in 10 minutes, I have to find a parking garage and I can’t afford a fucking ticket.”

I got out of the car and swung open the door of the record store.

It looked the same as always; poorly lit, cluttered, with too many posters on the walls to focus on any one of them. There were three girls clustered in the pop/rock section, probably cooing over the latest boy band backwash. I had a flash of wanting to be them. So easily placated by the shallow end of emotions.

“You need to go.” The manager was standing behind the counter with her hands already on her hips, prepared to smack my wrist with a ruler or some other trope of old people trying to stop us from not following the status quo. She was a middle-aged woman with dark roots, thinning purple hair, and thick black glasses. I’d only seen her once before now and even then she hadn’t acknowledged my presence.

“I just need to talk to Ethan for a second,” I said, leaning against the counter. I was exhausted of this go-between nonsense that Ethan was forcing on me. How could he care so much and so little at the same time?

“No. He’s in the back. He’s not coming out until you leave. So you need to take your high school  drama out of here before I fire him for not doing his job.” It occurred to me that everyone was on Ethan’s side. If he was hiding in back rooms or ignoring my phone calls or avoiding places I was it was my fault and there was no way that Ethan should be expected to act any different. A stack of vinyl records were sitting precariously on the edge of the counter. I wondered if he had just left them there. That she was going to fire him was such a fucking joke I wanted to clutch my stomach and laugh until I puked all over the counter. Instead I just swallowed my spit.

“It’ll just take a second,” I said, glancing over at the backdoor. He must have seen Henrietta’s car. Or Georgie had texted him. The thought alone pissed me off enough that I wanted walk the ten steps it would take me to go into the back. Or go hold Georgie up by his sweatshirt strings and ask him if he wanted to ruin our chances because he didn’t want to leave his boyfriend for the summer it would take to tour if we won.

“Leave. This is a business. We’re trying to work.” I took a step away from her. Was Ethan listening? Was his ear pressed against the swinging door because no one was there to see that for all of his aloof posturing it was all a lie and he was just as invested in this as any of us?

“Fine,” I said loudly. “Fine, stay here. Work here today. Work here forever!” For a second I questioned if he was really back there. Was this worth it? I looked over at the girls now staring at me, gaping slack-jawed and only looking away when I flipped them off as I stalked toward the exit.

I threw open the door and got into Henrietta’s car.

“Fuck him,” Henrietta said without asking me what had happened. I grabbed her pack of cigarettes from the cup holder and lit one. I slammed my foot against her dashboard.

“Fuck everyone,” I responded because for all of this bullshit I still couldn’t completely blame him.

 

**xx.**

We’d spent the last 45 minutes on one side of a long, polished table answering a set of questions from two label execs. I’d never really seen this side of the music business yet. It felt more like my job interview at Harbucks than a doorway to a being a successful goth rock band.

“I really think you need to calm the fuck down,” Henrietta said under her breath as we were coming down the stairs from the conference room we’d been in.

I waited until we’d gone out the glass doors to respond to her and by then my words felt deflated. “We had to be the only band that came in without their fucking singer.” I ran my tongue hard over my teeth.

“Are you kidding?” Georgie said from behind me. “I thought they seemed really interested in us.” I rolled my eyes before I'd even realized I was going to. He just wanted to feel less guilty about making it so easy for Ethan to avoid me.

“We looked unprofessional, incompetent, and uninterested —we're a joke.”

I hoped that Ethan was laughing. When we’d gone around and introduced ourselves they kept looking between me and Georgie waiting for one of us to identify ourselves the singer. But it was Henrietta who jumped in with the excuse we’d agreed on ahead of time for where Ethan was. That he was visiting relatives out of state. Might as well have said the dog ate him for believability.

Henrietta finished buttoning her coat and glanced up at me. “It made it seem like we aren’t desperate.”

I laughed when she said it. Because I was so desperate for this to work that saying anything otherwise felt like some eternal untruth.

“Aren’t we?!” I yelled more to the world than to her. At the cars, at the air, at the cement. Maybe I could punch the brick of the building we had just left. I wanted the whole thing to crumble. Isn’t that what people do when they lose complete control of their lives?

“Jesus, Dylan!” she grabbed my arm which I hadn’t realized was already clenched into a fist and forced me to look at her. Her eyes were steely and coated in thick black mascara. “It would have been great if Ethan had come. He didn’t. But guess what, I know how to answer questions too. And after the first minute neither one of those producers realized they were missing anything.” Henrietta always thought she was just as good as Ethan. Maybe better. At writing songs, at singing, at picking set lists. None of it was true. And everyone knew it. If the execs in that office were tricked it was only because they didn't know what they were missing.

Over her shoulder Georgie was nodding. I bet she was loving this. I shook my arm out of her grasp. “It was an interview for the band. We’re not the band.”

“Neither is Ethan!” Henrietta’s purple lips stretched around the words.

“I don’t see how they were supposed to take us seriously,” I said, not caring that I was repeating myself, it was still true. “Without a singer.”

Georgie was leaning against the wall sucking on his lipring thoughtfully. “They were probably thinking if they’re this good without a frontman; I bet they’re amazing when he is around.” Henrietta made a face at him like he’d gone a bit too far. “And you were really great too, when they asked us about our influences and other musical questions,” Georgie added. “The guy said, ‘I’m sure you’ll be hearing back from us,’ I mean, how can you not take that as a good sign?” Georgie's word vomit screamed trying too hard and I wanted to nod just to make him stop. It didn't matter anyway. It was all over. Ethan had fucked us over or he hadn't. There was no point in dragging this out anymore.

“I really think it went amazing,” she was quieter now in a way that made me believe her more. Without the haughtiness in her voice, she seemed like someone recounting facts, not trying to win an argument. “They were clearly impressed with the demo; I mean they said that they were surprised we were all so young. Anyway, that interview just seemed like a formality. I think they’ll probably judge it based on the demo alone.”

I stared back at the building like maybe I hadn’t seen it right until now. How much could I really trust my own judgment anyway? The whole time I’d felt the weight of the empty seat next to me, turning my body so I didn’t have to see it out of the corner of my eye. Anyway, given the personality of half the bands I’ve met at gigs, Georgie alone could have wowed the interviewers. The one interviewer and I had bonded over our shared obsession with Peter Murphy. Maybe that’s how things like this happened; you meet someone with enough power and happen to like the same things.

“Come on, I’m fucking freezing,” she said, breaking my focus, and leading the way towards the parking garage. I almost felt bad about the quick way she glanced back at me to make sure I was following her.

“It went great,” Georgie said next to me. I was going to tell him that I’d heard enough. But his cellphone was pressed to his ear. He laughed at something I couldn’t hear, and I wished he had been talking to me. I faced forward again, staring at the striped tights Henrietta was wearing. She’d dressed up for today, I only noticed now that it was over.

When we got to the car I slumped into the passenger seat and lit a cigarette. My anger had been stomped into a heavy dread that sat in the back of my throat. I tried to replay the interview in my mind, focusing on the positive things that Georgie and Henrietta pointed out. They had seemed impressed with the demo. Maybe it was enough, maybe that was all that mattered.

I leaned my head against the window, the sleepless night before catching up with me. Henrietta had left the music off, so the only noise was the intermittent clicking of her turn signal. I only opened my eyes when the motion of going forward stopped and we made a wide turn.  

“What are you doing?” I lifted my head up to stare out into the diner parking lot she was pulling into alongside the highway. I could see her car mirrored in the reflective siding covering the building.

“I’m hungry; I’ve been driving all day.” Over the door hung a blinking sign with a clock in the center that said ‘ _Round the Clock Diner_. People were probably murdered here and never heard from again. I wondered if anyone had come here hoping for it.

“Eat when you get home,” I said, turning to her. Being in Henrietta’s presence for the interview and the car ride was necessary, but eating lunch with her seemed to cross some line. But I should have known she’d find a way to exploit this situation.

“We still have another hour.” She grabbed her bag from the backseat as Georgie’s finger hovered over the seatbelt buckle.

“So?” Any charity I'd been feeling earlier had been recycled in the stale air of the car too many times.

“So I’m driving and I want coffee,” she said as she opened the door. A gust of frozen air rushed the heat out of the car. She stood in the doorway looking down at me with a frown.

“Well I don’t want to go to the diner.” I stopped myself from saying _with you_. I'd probably thrown enough tantrums for the day.

She sighed like I was a child refusing to take a bath. “Jesus. Then stay in the car.” The car shook when she shut the door. She didn’t say anything to Georgie as they walked in together.

I watched them disappear through the front door as my fingers drummed against the window. It was cold here and a couple of old people in the booth by the window were staring out at me like I was preparing to deal drugs to local third graders. I ducked my head down and scrapped some of the polish off my nails. I could feel them continuing to watch me through the two layers of glass.

I slammed the car door and stood in the parking lot, walking to the other end of the building. Between Denver and South Park, we were nowhere. In front of me the highway felt too close and all I could think about how quick and how easy it was for someone to vanish down it. I pulled out a cigarette and hadn’t even lit it before deciding it was too cold to stand out here and smoke. I was surprised it wasn’t snowing. I placed it back in the pack; it was clear it had been disturbed. Nothing ever goes back the way it was. I stared at the crooked white tube longer than was probably mentally healthy before admitting defeat and pushing the door of the diner open.

Henrietta passed me her menu when I sat down next to Georgie. They already had coffee but Henrietta waved a hand at the waitress and made her bring me a cup.

“They have sweet potato pancakes,” she said as I scanned the menu, knowing that’s what I was looking for.

I shrugged and kept reading, trying to convince myself to get anything else when the waitress took our order. Over the speakers 1950’s love songs played too loud. At first I thought it was to block out the roar of cars on the highway. But more likely it was for the benefit of all the old people hunched over their booths complaining about how big the portions were. I had to glance up at Georgie and Henrietta just to remember that I was one of them, that I was still young.

"Sweet potato pancakes." I mumbled. The waitress made me repeat myself and I sneered at her back as she walked away.

Henrietta pulled her writing notebook from her bag and started crossing something out. Georgie was on his phone texting next to me. I stared down at my coffee. I guess this is how I’d spent most days of my life. When my coffee was cool enough to drink, I pretended that I’d willed it so.

 

**xxx.**

I waited until Henrietta had disappeared around a corner before walking away from my house. It was too early to go home, and I didn’t want to anyway. It felt defeatist, accepting the day for what it had been. The sky looked like it could barely hold its own heaviness – a party decoration left up too long with wilting tape. I hoped it would fall.

I rounded the corner thinking of the way they said we’d be hearing back from them. I turned it over in my mind. They might just say that to everyone. Or it might mean that we’d hear back either way.  

The soles of my converse were wearing out, and it felt like my feet were scraping against the concrete as I walked with no real destination. The cemetery gates were open as I passed, and I thought it was as good of a place as any to pass time. I almost didn’t notice that anyone was sitting on the only bench until I was in front of it.

“Leave,” I said, hoping that I was still best at securing the graveyard, if nothing else. I'd had enough of putting on a show for one day.

“Hi Dylan.”  Mike had a habit of dismissing my annoyance like it was a quirky personality trait.

A drawing pad was open in his lap. He ran his thumb over the dull tip of a charcoal pencil as he looked back at the weeping stone angel he was sketching. I thought about the time when we were kids and he told me that he was just as dark as me, maybe darker. It was no truer now.

He took a breath and turned back to me. “If you give me ten minutes I’ll sketch you mid-eye roll.” At least he was self-aware.

“Draw me and I’ll drive that pencil through your heart.”

He smiled a bit. He would probably always be amused by vampire references. I wasn't sure if I thought that was dependable or just sad.

I was annoyed by everything about him in this moment; his crossed legs, his shiny doc martin boot hanging over the ground, his fingerless gloves, the way he’d taken both of his headphones out of his ears and wrapped them neatly around his iPod before slipping it back in his bag. His fingers moved so deliberately I was briefly entranced. I held my eyes shut for a moment before looking away. I was just tired. I picked up his pencil case before sitting down on the bench next to him.

“Put out your cigarette please,” he said, glancing over at me. “It’s killing us both you know.”

“I wish I could pick and choose.” I blew the smoke against his hair, hoping it would blot out the bright green dye. He twisted his face away from me and breathed into the wind. I hoped he realized that this redneck town had more cancer in its _fresh_ air from everyone’s 1980’s compact car emissions than I had in a pack of cigarettes.

“At least there’s no such thing as second-hand heroin,” he said when he was sure it was safe to turn back. 

I laughed a bit into my cigarette. “I was never doing heroin you twit.” He stopped shading the ground around the base of the statue. He sat back against the bench, glancing over at me like he couldn’t tell if I was serious. I wondered if it had bothered him, imagining me turning his cash into something to shoot into my arm.

“Geez Dylan, you seem particularly touchy tonight. Did you want to talk about it?” It was almost unfathomable that someone could deliver that last part without a hint of sarcasm.

“Talk about what?” I turned to him with what I hoped was an incredulous look. “Our feelings?”

“I’m not goth; I don’t deny that boys can cry,” he said, poking me in the arm with his pencil, completely ignoring my clear disinterest in the subject. For a second I thought he’d driven past Ethan’s apartment building and watched me sitting on the curb wiping my eyes on the edges of my sleeves. But it was more probable he was making a Cure reference. Not both, he wasn’t that clever.

I stared down at where the pencil had touched me. “No, that’s just you when you run out of cherry-flavored lip gloss.” I said. He just licked his lips and turned back to his drawing. He was halfway through a sketch book that was marked by post-it notes labeled with different subjects. Some said _friends_ , another said _still life_ , the post-it at the section he was in now was labeled _angels_.

For a second it was important that he knew I hadn’t been funneling his money into some insatiable drug addiction. “I was recording a demo for my band and I had to pay for the studio time.” It sounded so innocent when I boiled it down to the barest facts. Maybe everything did. I thought about writing it on a piece of paper and sliding it under Ethan's door.

“I’m surprised your band didn’t already have a demo,” he said, effectively taking all the fun out of bragging. He smudged the charcoal with his finger.

I took a final drag of my cigarette before throwing it in the direction of the statue he was drawing. “There was a contest and you had to submit one. If we win we get a record contract.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Wow, a record contract. I knew that you were serious about your band, but that’d put you on a whole different level.”

I was glad someone knew I was dedicated. Mike was probably just pretending to be interested though. I shouldn’t hold on too tightly to anything he said. He just didn’t have it in him to be an asshole like me. 

It was starting to flurry a bit as we sat there, and he packed his notepad into his bag, obviously jumping on the first excuse to escape. I stared at the Minor Threat pin stabbed through a corner of the canvas bag, and the travel mug that was leaning against it. He would be the type of person to bring a travel mug places. I was going to say so out loud but I could feel Mike staring at me, his hands unmoving as they rested against his bag. I swallowed my comment down and waited for the inevitable excuse to leave. But he didn't say anything.

He was staring at my collar with a heavy expression. I knew what he was seeing; a purple bruise that was stretched over my clavicle. I’d been so careful to keep it covered at the interview today in front of the people there. I guess I had forgotten Mike counted as a person too. I tugged my coat closer to my neck, continuing to watch him until he met my eyes, daring him to say something about it.

But for a while neither of us said anything, he turned back to the statue he had been drawing. It looked more interesting in charcoal than it did in real life. I tried to decide if there was anything meaningful in the idea as I lit another cigarette. He didn’t complain this time and I was a little disappointed as I blew the smoke down away from us. I hated when someone learned something about you that made you into more than a caricature of a person. It was usually when people started expecting things from you. I was tired of never meeting anyone's expectations of me.

When he turned back to me I stared at the plaid scarf draped around his neck. It wasn’t even a real scarf, just thin fabric; he must be cold too.  “So when do you find out if you’ve won?” he said. If he was still searching for the bruise or signs of more I couldn't tell. He probably wasn't; I knew better than to assume.

I felt a pang in my chest. I didn’t know why. I tried to ignore it as I struggled to remember what I was supposed to be talking about. My mind was stretched in too many directions to travel from one end to the other. I took a drag of my cigarette. “We made it through the first phase. I’ll probably hear something back soon.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if you won,” Mike said without a trace of jealousy. I wondered how many other people felt genuinely glad for others. I was sure I didn't know any of them. “You already play like someone with a record deal.”

I looked away from him and at the accumulating snow on the bench between us feeling like I should compliment his band too or something. But I could tell that he didn’t expect me to. That he was sincere and friendly and that’s why people liked him. That’s why he’d always have friends.

“What do you know,” I mumbled. I shifted away from him, a bit embarrassed by what he’d said.

“Well I am in a band too, you know.” He had an eyebrow raised. Where did people go to get taught how to act during social dialogues? I always felt two tones behind the conversation.

“Is that what you call sitting on a stool with an acoustic guitar and flicking your hair over your shoulders?”

Mike laughed and tugged his hair behind his ears. “I can’t help that I was born beautiful.”

“More like pay $80 for a cut and dye job at a trendy barber shop.” It was probably the first effortless conversation I’d had in weeks. It felt like he was stage whispering the script from the wings. How long had it been since I'd spoken with someone where there wasn't something to be won or lost?

“And what would you advise? That I dip my head in kool aid and slice the edges with a butcher knife?”

“You sassy bitch,” I said dully, rolling my eyes.

Mike leaned back, looking pleased as he stared out at the headstones.

I finished my cigarette and stuffed my hands in my pockets, wishing it would just stop snowing.  The flurries were turning into flakes and beginning to coat the ground, I had a panicked notion that we’d both be buried alive if we didn’t move right now. But he was digging through his pockets for his keys.

“Let’s go to Tweek Bros. I’ll buy you a coffee if you explain how to record a demo.” He stood up, stretching his back a bit. I wondered how long he’d been here before I showed up. He started walking to where his car was parked alongside the curb. I didn't know how I’d missed it walking in. I could see the _Paramore_ bumper sticker from here.

It was barely dark. And now that it was snowing this bad, if I didn’t go with him, I’d have to sit here until I was sure my mom was home. Maybe I would freeze to death.

“Come on Dylan,” he said, making my name way more sing-songy than it sounded from anyone else’s lips. He was waiting between the gates for me like this was something we did all the time, and of course I’d come.

“Fine,” I said more to myself than to him before stepping in the imprints his boots had left in the snow. “You don’t have to be such a fag about it though,” I mumbled.

Mike turned back to me, “I am Count Fagula, right?” I looked at my chapped hands. I didn't know if that was a joke or if I'd reached the end of Mike's daily charity quota.

We sat in the car as we waited for his wipers to clear off the snow already piled on the windshield. If I stayed quiet long enough maybe he would forget I was here.

“One day when you go through puberty I’ll teach you how to drive a car.” Mike said as he flicked on the heat.

“Why so I can go from one end of this shitty of town to the other…but quicker?”

He laughed, “Yeah so you can realize what a waste of time it was… but quicker.” We both watched a flatbed truck go past with a _Are you following Jesus this close?_ bumper sticker. Mike let out a hiss of air, “I hate it here.”

South Park was a waste of both of our time. With the street lights flickering on over the snow, it seemed ignorant of its own uselessness. I picked up Mike’s CD case and started paging through it.

“Who made you all these mixes?” I asked, staring at the different handwriting in sharpie on the blank CDs.

“Admirers,” Mike said, blinking away his despondent expression to flash a smile at me. If any other person had said that I’d think they were fucking with me. I ran my fingers over the curling ends of the L in “love” that some girl had written carefully, hoping it would matter. I closed the CD case and put it back at my feet. How did anyone listen to mixed CDs other people made them? 

The heat was blasting cold air against my cheeks, and I tried to make myself smaller. There were barely any cars on the road and the ones that were, were going extra slow, Mike included. I would have mentioned it if I didn’t think I’d be setting myself up for another dig at my driving ineptitude.

“Mr. Tweak said we could play another gig tomorrow night.” He obviously felt the need to fill up the silence. I wished you could just tell people that you weren’t just around them for the conversation.

“That’s something,” I mumbled.

“I guess it’s not really your scene.”

I shrugged.

“You’ll have to tell me when your next show is, now that you’re going to be famous; I’ll be able to say that I saw you before you sold out.”

“Yeah,” I said, trying to imagine our next show like I really thought it would happen. I felt the hinge break off my emotions again, and tried to swallow the feeling. “We’ll never be fucking conformist sell outs.”

I don’t know why I said it like that, because I knew Mike would laugh and I could be a caricature again. Maybe that’s all we both had going for ourselves. 


	11. Chapter 11

_You know that things aren't going well for you when you can't even tell people the simplest fact about your life, just because they'll presume you're asking them to feel sorry for you._

_—Nick Hornby_

**x.**

 

When I used to think about the future I wasn’t counting down the days until prom night or imagining the tired metaphors the valedictorian would deliver at my graduation ceremony. In my big dreams I was always in a studio with my guitar resting on my knee or on a stage backlit by colored lights. But lately I’d begun to think if it meant Ethan would be there too, I’d rent a tux and in a secluded classroom our lips would taste like the gin and fruit punch when pressed together. If he’d be in the audience, I’d walk down the aisle to _Pomp and Circumstance;_ I’d curl my lip a little and look for him in the crowd when someone inevitably said, “Oh the places you will go.”

It didn’t make any difference, my wanting anything, I knew that much by now, at least. Ethan wasn’t interested in doing anything while I was around. The things I was willing to do for him would never be enough. Not when he wasn’t willing to let me.

He hadn’t even gone to his own prom. On his prom night we’d sat at Benny’s discussing the logistics about enacting a _Carrie_ -esque prank. And when Henrietta had told us to shut the fuck up because she was eating home fries with ketchup and didn’t need to hear about pig’s blood anymore we’d only gotten more detailed.  I should have recorded the conversation. Every conversation I’d ever had with him so I’d have more than the post-production artifice that was the demo.

And on Ethan’s graduation he hadn’t walked to get his diploma. He hadn’t needed to say it was because his mom wouldn’t be there, we all knew it. Instead we’d spent the day helping him move into his apartment. I remember standing with him in his bedroom for the last time staring at the rectangular rings of dust on the walls where his posters had been. “Smoke with me,” he’d said, pressing an unlit cigarette to the one between his lips. I’d taken it from his fingers. He was impossible to understand then, too. I needed him to tell me that he was glad to be leaving, glad to be on his own. But I hadn’t said anything at all. Even when ashes of his cigarette began to fall onto the carpet. I should have grabbed his arm and told him we needed to get going. Said anything to get him to stop staring so blankly at the wall.

It’d been a week since I found out that we’d made it through the third phase of competition. We had been one of ten bands being considered for the top two spots. It felt like I’d walked around for the past seven days with my fingers crossed. I’d only mentioned the news to Mike over coffee one night when I couldn’t take the weight of the knowledge another day. His smile had been confirmation enough that it was something to be proud of, and I’d let myself be glad if only for the hour I’d been in his presence.

And today I’d finally gotten the call. Our band was one of two being considered for the top slot. We have a fifty-fifty shot at a record contract. And the thought alone decimated any feeling in my head beyond exhilaration. I didn’t think about how there was no point in calling Ethan, or that even if we did win I would have to con him into hearing the news.

I was swinging my legs over my bed with my phone pressed to my ear waiting for Henrietta to pick up. We’d gotten to the point where we’d exchange a few words between classes or right after school, nothing serious, nothing more than I would be willing to say to anyone to get them to leave me alone. But right now, being with her was the next best thing to being with Ethan. We could light too many sticks of incense and dream up elaborate rider requests, see if we could request things more outlandish than we’d ever thought of before. When my call went to voicemail I had to glance down to make sure I’d called the right number.

There was a text from her a second afterwards: _I’ll call u later._

I tried to imagine what she could possibly be busy with on a Saturday. Maybe she was back with Damien. I wouldn’t know. It was hard not to let the thought pull my mood down as I called Georgie.

 “Hey Dylan.”

“We’re in the final two,” I said, pleased to just be saying the words and having them be true.

“The final two of what?” Georgie asked. I waited a second to see if I thought that was sarcasm.

“Of the competition.”

“Oh is that still happening?”

“Yeah, we should celebrate.” I was surprised at how much effort it took to suggest it now.

“Well I’m going to the movies with Ike right now, but I don’t have to if you wanted to—.” Georgie trailed off in that meaningful way where I was supposed to pick up the rest of the sentence.

“No, it’s fine.” I hated that he couldn’t just tell me no. That I had to go though this dog and pony show of telling him that I didn’t want it. When I was the one who called him. It was so fake I wanted to strangle myself rather than participate.

“Okay, well, I can call you afterwards?”

“If you want; I might be busy then.” I wanted to tell him not to bother. That he was out of the band. But there wasn’t any band to kick him out of. Sometimes it was hard to me to accept that some people could only see what was right in front of them. And until a record contract and a magazine photographer were in front of Georgie he wouldn’t understand what was dangling over his head. It was fine anyway. I had gotten used to caring more about this than everyone else.

I dropped my phone onto my bed and walked over to my dresser, digging under my t-shirts until I hit the bottle I was looking for. A bottle of vodka Ethan had left here. We’d still been together then and I’d noticed he was leaving it behind as we walked out of the door. I hadn’t said anything, but when I’d come home I’d stuffed it in my drawer. It was almost like I knew even then to start hoarding parts of him. I must have always been preparing for an ending without knowing it.

I unscrewed the lid and cringed at the smell. In a way it was like he was celebrating with me, contributing without consent. I felt like I was stealing something from him, which seemed like a concept I might appreciate more after I was drunk. The vodka burned down my throat and I for a second I thought it was going to come back up. I sat completely still for a minute on my bed until I was sure I was okay.

But I didn’t feel like sitting here alone when the life I’d always wanted was at my fingertips. I might curse the whole thing by not celebrating properly. I slipped the fifth of vodka into my coat pocket and went out the backdoor. I looked down both ends of my street. There was no traffic like always. No one passed through here without dying here too. I looked down at my feet moving over the asphalt. It felt like the world was driving away from me and my hand had been clutching the bumper for a couple blocks now. I knew I could keep holding on if I had someone hanging on with me. I checked the glowing screen of my cellphone. It wasn’t past Mike’s bedtime yet. I still had a chance at some sort of human contact tonight. He answered on the second ring.

“Where are you?” I said, cutting him off.

There was a pause before he responded. I could hear people in the background vying for his attention and music that I couldn’t identify.

“Just out with some friends.” Of course he was. It was Saturday night. People with friends wouldn’t spend it alone.

“Oh.” I didn’t step off the curb that led to his house. I stood on the cement, and looked down at a bag of flattened bag of cheesy puffs caught in the gutter.  

“Why?” He’d moved to a quieter place now and I could barely hear the music anymore.

“No reason.” There wasn’t any point in continuing to talk to him, but I didn’t want him to hang up yet. The street was too quiet and having someone talking to me reminded me that I wasn’t part of the scenery.

“I was just leaving. Do you want to do something?” I was lucky that Mike didn’t stay out late. It was only nine.

“Yeah, meet me at your house.”

“Okay Dylan. See you soon.” It was hard not to cringe at how cheerful he could be in so few words.

I was only a block away, so I circled it, taking another swig of the vodka as I went. It went down easier than the first. I dropped my hand back to my side. If I showed up at Mike’s after too many drinks he would probably start spouting statistics about liver cancer or alcoholism. Even if I told him it was just for celebrating, he would see it all as one big cry for help.

When I came back to Mike’s house he was shutting the door to his car. His hair was artfully disheveled, and the black eyeshadow he usually wore was spread darker underneath his eyes than usual.

“Did you hear something about the contest?” he asked, already smiling.

“We’re in the final two.” I could feel myself grinning back at him as I said it.

“I knew it!” he said. He hugged me for a brief moment before I managed to put a hand on his stomach and press until he moved away. I remembered the soft way Ethan had kissed my temple when we’d finished recording the demo. That had been celebration enough then. Tonight to celebrate I needed to get drunk enough to forget that.

I followed Mike into his house. He flicked on the lights and ducked his head around the corner to see if his parents were home. He shrugged and looked back at me. “We should celebrate.”

“Exactly.” I pulled the vodka out of my pocket. “Let’s go to The Black Cat and get fucked up.”

Mike’s smile faded as he eyed the clear bottle. “Oh Dylan, I don’t drink. But you can.” I wondered what he had had in mind before I suggested drinking. Probably ordering a pizza and watching an R-rated movie.

“You have to,” I said, feeling a bit like stereotypical bad-influence in an after-school special. I just needed a leather jacket. And Mike should be wearing less black. But even with his black jeans and grungy flannel shirt, the differences between he and I came into focus. “I have a fake ID; I’ll get us drinks if you don’t like vodka.”

He was leaning against the kitchen counter running a hand through his hair, looking troubled in a way I’d always suspected he only affected for his teenager audience at shows. I gave him what I hoped was a pleading look. “Mike, this is very possibly the last Saturday I’ll be a faceless kid in a faceless town. Have a drink with me.”

He sucked on his lip and let out a breath. “If you want to drink we have to stay in and just have wine.” He waved a hand at my vodka. “None of that stuff.”

Mike’s parents _would_ be the type to keep wine in the house. I walked over to an elaborate wine rack next to the cabinets I was surprised I hadn’t noticed before. “Pick any bottle.” He sighed like he hated having to be so firm with me. “But I’m not driving anywhere.”

I was already pulling a bottle off the rack. “Whatever.” He’d probably feel differently after a glass of this.

He tentatively pulled two glasses from the cupboard and sat them on the kitchen table. “That’s enough,” he said when I had filled the glass half-way. I ignored him and filled it to the top. But he took it anyway. He ran his finger around the rim. I thought he looked pretty natural holding a wine glass. I could see him with an easel and a glass of chardonnay between his fingers. He looked up at me, frowning at the way I was already half-way through my glass. “A toast,” he said, “To _The Belladonnas_.”

“ _The Belladonnas_ ,” I said, feeling the strain of the ‘s’ at the end as I clinked our glasses together. We should have said the Belladonna. I was the only member left. I remember when Ethan had picked the name from the back of his biology book. It was name of an herb that had been used as eye-drops in ancient times to dilate women’s pupils to make them appear more seductive. He said the world needed music that made living more seductive. Henrietta had always maintained it was sexist, but none of the names she had ever come up with had been worth changing for. I chugged the rest of my glass. It just tasted like grape juice, that’s how I could tell that it was expensive.

Mike took a small sip of his, before deciding that it tasted okay and taking another. I didn’t feel bad; I thought nineteen was too old for someone to be spending their first Saturday night drunk. I was doing him a favor.

“So when do you find out for sure that you’ve won?” he asked, sitting across from me at the kitchen table.

“They said they’d have a decision next week.” I wish I could sleep for those seven days so they felt like one long second.

“Geez, how are you supposed to think about anything else?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “I guess that’ll be no big change.” School and work were something I happened to do for lack of other options. They weren’t something I spent actual time thinking about. I spent every period, every customer thinking about what life would be like when I didn’t have to do this anymore.

An hour and another bottle of wine later I was hanging off his bed watching him play the guitar across the room. From upside down his hair looked better. The green highlights somehow making more sense in his overall look. His room too; the edge of an old _Twilight_ poster curling around his closet door could be _Donnie Darko_ from this angle, his lamps looked better as chandeliers. Mike hit a particularly bad note and stopped. At least he could recognize his errors now.

“No, it’s sloppy again,” I said, “you’re fucking up the bar chord every time.” I wanted to move his fingers for him, but also getting off of the bed felt like it’d require too much effort.

He sighed and put the guitar down in exchange for his wine glass. “I don’t know,” he said. “That’s why all my songs sound the same. I avoid bar chords entirely.”  He was picking at a sticker on his guitar and frowning. If I was sure that he would be sober enough to remember what I’d shown him, I would have taught him how to do it. But I’d have to save the lesson for another day.

I looked at my hair brushing against the floor.

“Can I see your sketchbook?” I knew how important it was to feel good at something. And I didn’t want to watch him sitting there like that anymore.

“Yeah.” He raised his eyebrows and looked over at his desk. He stood and laughed a little to himself. It probably had something to do with the way he wasn’t moving. “The room is spinning,” he told me, leaning heavily to one side. “Okay, it’s okay again.” He hadn’t completely righted himself, so I wasn’t sure if he genuinely thought that or if he knew it was too early to be unable to walk.

He retrieved the sketchbook and sat on the floor by the bed as I flipped through it. “The way you draw everyone. You make them look more profound than they really are.”

“How do you know?” Mike asked, looking over my shoulder at a portrait of his friend looking off into the distance.

I shut the book, not looking for an argument. “I guess I don’t.”

Mike opened the book again, flipping through the pages again with a slight frown. “It’s just a thing I do. I’m not really that good.” I could feel Mike trying to pull the questions from me that would let him sink further into a self-deluded melancholia. I would never forgive myself if I participated. I rolled to my side, feeling the dull jab of the vodka bottle still in my pocket.

“So what would happen if you drank actual alcohol? Do you think your body would reject it?”

Mike laughed a little too much. “Maybe,” he said. I tossed him the bottle and it fell through his hands and into his lap. Mike looked over, smiling under the hair that had fallen over his face. “Whoops.”

He retrieved it and turned it over before twisting off the lid. Watching him hold Ethan’s bottle to his lips felt like betrayal and revenge curled up into a tiny pill-bug. Mike took a quick sip, his face twisting as he gagged it down.

“Chase it with wine!” I laughed, feeling drunker than I thought I was.  He reached for the glass, and did it, letting out a hiss.

“Disgusting.” He said, sliding the bottle back towards me.

The world did feel warmer now and I shut my eyes. At some point Mike put in a Magnetic Fields album. Something about the synth made my brain hum just the right way. I imagined the room dropping away like a set in a play, and just the bed would be left here. I could wait here without moving a muscle for the phone call to tell me that everything had been worth it.

“So why are you here?”

It took me a minute to realize that it wasn’t part of the song. That it was Mike talking so softly, so seriously.

When I opened my eyes he was laying across the throw rug in the middle of his room, a wine bottle lying by his side. He wasn’t looking at me, just watching his fingers push the bottle in circles.

“Free wine.” I grinned at him, hoping he would find something new to think about.

“Where’s the rest of your band though. You all used to travel in a pack. I’m sure they would drink actual alcohol with you.”  It wasn’t fair that I was the one left with all of the questions. Henrietta would never let anyone ask and Ethan would have never let anyone notice. Georgie was never more than two steps from Ike anyway and how was I the one left trying to cling to some ploy of righteous indignation and false accusations of people not viewing them as individuals. It wasn’t fair that I was the one left with the smoking gun while everyone else spun off into their own universes, unaffected.  

“You’re doing a pretty good job too.” I choked out, not giving up on the chance to deflect. What would the rest of them have said? If I could answer that, I would have had a better response.

Mike sat back up and tilted the glass to his lips. I didn’t know why he wouldn’t let it go. What switch flicked on his alcohol-soaked brain that suddenly wanted answers to questions I didn’t want him to ask.

 “Don’t they want to celebrate with you?” I was somehow still caught off-guard at Mike’s blunt questioning. This wasn’t how I thought _In Vino Veritas_ was supposed to work.

“No.” I said, reaching for the vodka, trying to outdo his bluntness with my own. Shock him into giving up. “They will though. Once we win.”

“So what happened?”

“I lied to them. About the contest and other things.” I hated to say it out loud. It wasn’t as simple as that but I didn’t know how to explain every moment that had led up to me standing in the hallway in front of Ethan’s doorway. I would have had to retell every moment I had known Ethan, every moment of his life and mine that existed independently of us knowing each other. Every diner trip, every smoked cigarette. But I couldn’t even begin, because all Ethan had left me with were my memories of him and this bottle of vodka, and I couldn’t share both.

“I can’t see why anyone is surprised. You’ve always been dedicated to your band. I imagine you’d kill if it meant securing a gig at a club.” I’d already proven that I would do a lot of things for the band. None of them made me feel particularly proud of my own dedication.

“I don’t know if that’s a good thing.” I felt a phantom hand on my thigh and had to stare for a long moment until I believed there wasn’t one there.

“It is if you ever want to get out of his town. You need passion like that. You need people who will take chances.” It sounded like Mike was berating himself more than trying to encourage me, but it was too much work to change the subject. And he still had so much more to lose.

“Not everyone feels that way,” I said with a shrug, hardly anyone at all, apparently.

“Well, that’s because.” he thought about it for a minute and I was waiting for something insightful. “They’re stupid.” He almost looked apologetic at not being able to come up with something better. But I knew if I couldn’t understand them, and god knew I’d tried, no one else could.

“They’ll come around. Once we win.” It was the only moment that would have enough impact

“Do you really think so?” He was twisting strands of his hair together between his fingers. I watched as the black mixed with the green. His eyes were crossing as he dropped the hair over and over before picking it up again.

“Yes,” I said quickly, a little annoyed. How could they not? With the promise of being paid to make music. Except Georgie was only in ninth grade and seemed more interested in Ike and had stopped asking about band practice weeks ago. And when Henrietta wasn’t getting stoned in her car alone while cutting class, she was probably writing poetry in her bedroom. And Ethan had so successfully bleached me out of his life that I wasn’t convinced that I hadn’t dreamed him into all my best memories after one too many slams against the wall by my step-dad.

I leaned back and said out loud what I’d been wondering for weeks now. “I don’t understand why they aren’t excited about winning. About leaving this town.” Why couldn’t I slice off just a bit of my determination and slip it into their coffee.

“I’d think they would at least understand why you are,” Mike said. At first I nodded but something about his tone didn’t sit well. He looked up at me; his glassy eyes fixating somewhere near my chin.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Mike frowned like it should be obvious to me as well before looking down and nodding toward me. “Your bruises,” he said. But the two words ran together and I had to push them apart until they made sense. And I understood why he was staring at my arms now. I immediately looked for the cardigan I’d worn to cover up earlier. I must have taken it off without thinking. Because it was strewn across Mike’s bedpost, and the oval bruises stood out against my pale skin.

“Not just today,” he said, watching as I covered one of the bruises with my own fingertip but it wasn’t big enough to block it out. “Last week when we met at Tweek Bros. the wind blew your bangs back and I saw your black eye.” I should have remembered my hat that day. Relying on my bangs to stay in one unified sheet to mask my eye had clearly been too risky.

“It doesn’t matter.” I said. It was important that he believed that. Anyway, how much could it matter to him if it took him until he was almost black-out drunk to mention it?

“It does.” Mike said. I hated when people could sound so self-righteous, especially when they were slurring their speech.

“It just helps my step-dad confirm his dwindling masculinity to hit a 130-pound teenager. That’s all.” Those words made it feel okay almost. And I wanted Mike to feel okay about this. It wasn’t a big deal. It couldn’t be.

“You mean you.” Mike mumbled. I had to spin the words through my mind for a second to realize what he meant.

If I ever questioned my decision to not tell anyone what was happening to me, the rawness of this conversation was enough to validate my silence. “I don’t want to talk about it.” I should have said something more forceful.

“Someone should,” Mike said too loudly like there was an audience of people sitting on their hands in the room. Waiting for the applause light and fading outro music to let them know when the drama was over and they were supposed to have learned a lesson.  “Just yesterday you were wincing when you swung your messenger bag over your shoulder.”

I didn’t like the idea that he was noticing things like that about me. I thought I’d done a better job at holding myself together than that. It made me wonder if everyone knew and just hadn’t said anything. Hadn’t cared. “We all have problems Mike. Welcome to the world.”

“You act like I’m just not understanding something. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Why don’t you tell you mom what’s happening.” It was almost laughable that someone could really believe that’s all it would take to fix it. I didn’t think for a minute that my mom didn’t see the bruises or hear the raised voices down the hall as she sat there listening to primetime TV. I couldn’t explain something like that to Mike, who had chosen to keep living in his parent’s house.

“Look. Until I can either graduate and afford to move out or get this record deal, I’m stuck with it.”

“I would have thought Ethan would have cracked a cane into your step-dad’s neck by now. Or, I don’t know. Hog tied him and thrown him into a trunk.” Maybe that’s what Mike had been waiting for; my friends to intervene. The thought made me feel sick, but it was probably the wine mixing with vodka in my stomach and nothing else.

“Ethan couldn’t give a shit less what happens to me.” I didn’t mean to say it so quietly and tried to cover up the slight shake in my voice by shrugging casually and adding, “it’s my fault he feels that way.”

Mike raised his eyebrow. I was sure it was the alcohol that was responsible for me saying that out loud and not some need to confide in him. But because I couldn’t explain everything I just tried to explain one thing.

“He thought this contest was pointless. I don’t think he even wanted to do it. He just didn’t want to disappoint me.” I hadn’t realized I thought that until saying it out loud. Mike was lying back against the rug again, and I was sure he’d finally passed out.

“That’s just the way Ethan is.” He said a few minutes later. But he’d said it into the floor of his room so I wasn’t even sure if he knew what he was talking about anymore. Still, I wished that his words didn’t feel so true.

I got off the bed and drank what was left in the bottle as I put Mike’s guitar back in its stand. He groaned a bit and blinked at me before closing his eyes again. “Feeling okay?” I asked. His hair was sticking up from where it’d been pressed against the floor.

“Time to get into your coffin,” I mumbled.  He snorted and nodded in an uncoordinated way, clutching at my shoulder as I helped him sit up. He lay down in his bed, reaching for a blanket with his eyes closed.  

“Take off your jacket,” I said, helping him pull the sleeves off. He slid his eyes open and looked up at me.

“Thanks Dylan,” he said, trying to smile at me in the same friendly way he always did. But it was smaller and more tired now. And by the time I managed to get the jacket off, he was passed out again.

I hung it over the chair by his desk and picked his sketch book off the floor. I wished he hadn’t had so much to drink because now I was alone again. But at least now that he was passed out I could spend the night here without having to ask. I went to the kitchen and filled a glass with water and put it on the nightstand by Mike’s bed before wandering down the hallway of his house looking for the bathroom.

I dug a joint from my pocket and lit it. Even if Mike wasn’t passed out I doubt he’d know what pot smelled like. I leaned my head against the tile and tried to believe I felt too drunk to get up. That I had something I thought was worth getting up for.

Once I’d found Ethan leaning up against a bathroom wall like this. I tried to capture his pose exactly, but I didn’t have enough room to stretch out my legs so I closed my eyes waiting for the high to hit me.

I was sixteen and we’d played a house party for Bebe Stevens. After the show I’d needed Ethan’s keys to put my guitar in his car and when I couldn’t find him smoking outside or in any of the rooms that people were dancing or drinking in I’d looked through every room until I found him in her parent’s bathroom. His legs were long and thin and sprawling in front of him as he sat against the wall. A cigarette was stubbed out on the side of the bathtub. He looked like he was ready to throw his drink at the door but put his arm down when he saw it was me.

I locked the door behind me and stared down at him. “Everything okay?” I asked because asking if _he_ was okay would have been too invasive back then, maybe still. He laughed to himself instead of answering.  I thought about the improbability of me being able to carry him out of the party. In the mirror across from me I looked especially useless, a collared shirt tucked into striped pants with a studded belt slung over my hips, smudged eyeliner ringing my eyes. I hopped onto the counter of the bathroom and lit a cigarette while I considered my options. Every couple minutes I had to yell at someone to fuck off when they kept jiggling the door handle.

Eventually, I leaned down and took the cup from Ethan’s hand, and he finally looked up at me again. “Why do we do this Dylan?”

“What?” I asked. His hair was shorter then, shaved on the sides and long in the front so that his curls tumbled over his forehead and hit against his nose. I remember wanting to brush it away because I thought the effect in that moment made him look dead.

“Put up with these people.” I didn’t need to ask what had happened. It could have been anything. From the beer can that was thrown at him during our encore or the fight Henrietta and Damien had gotten into. Damien called her a fat bitch and Ethan had tried to intervene. Henrietta told him to fuck off and mind his own business.

“We don’t have to,” I’d said, “let’s go.” I kicked my creepers in front of me, I’d worn my platform pair that night to give myself a height advantage over people that I didn’t want to look up to.

“No, just stay here with me.”

I laughed a little because I wasn’t sure if he was serious. Across from us a picture in a frame said told us that _Life’s a Beach_. I wondered if Bebe’s mom really believed that or if she wanted other people to think she did and which was easier to forgive. I looked back at Ethan with his palms turned up on the tile floor like he was waiting for someone to step on them.

“You think I’m drunk. I’m not. I’m just done.”

I stubbed my cigarette in the drain and sat down next to him against the wall. I stared down at the black and grey argyle socks I could see under the cuffs of his jeans. We’d done this before. Ethan would say something like this and the best thing I’d know to do was to be close to him until those thoughts could be kept at bay again.

“It won’t always be this way,” I said, hating to have to be positive one when I felt so many of the same feelings myself. “We won’t always be here.”

“We will, I know it now. South Park is a disease and we were born infected.”

I took a sip of the drink I’d pulled from his hand. It was mostly melted ice cubes and gin.

“We have the band. We’ll get a record deal, like we always said.”

Ethan leaned his head against the wall and stared up at Bebe’s parent’s matching towel set. “It’s a fairytale.” It was hard to tell what he meant, but I knew if I asked I’d have missed the point.

Ethan always sounded so certain. Everything seemed so fatalistic when he talked like that. It was hard not to be pulled into it with him. I could see people’s feet moving past from the crack under the door. They were playing loud pop songs now that our set was over, I’m sure everyone was pleased that they could sing along. I chewed on my thumbnail and wished I’d drank more before coming in here.

“Hey, I don’t really mean it,” he said quietly, turning to me but nothing about his expression had changed. “It’s just been a shitty night.”

“Yeah,” I’d said with a small nod. I’d believed him. I shouldn’t have. There had to be a part of him that loved it, being an outsider, being shut away from everyone. There had to be a part of him that loved failing. It confirmed something about the world that he had decided a long time ago.

I should have kissed him then. Pushed him against the bathtub and climbed into his lap. Forced him to stop languishing in his own misery for just a minute.

Because if it happened back then I would have had more time to prove to him how much I loved him. I could have tackled his insecurities with words, and touches, and a million instances of my mouth on his.  I could have shown him how good it felt to believe that there has to be more than this and maybe we could have it. No one should deserve it more than us.

But I had just sat there, like I’m sitting here now. Waiting on good news.

 


	12. Chapter 12

_All we ever wanted was everything, all we ever got was cold._

_—Bauhaus_

**x.**

“I’m sorry, what?” It was the call I’d felt I’d been waiting my whole life for.

“We went with the other band.” I shut my eyes and put my hand in my hair, trying hard not to ask again.

“Is that decision final?”

“Er…yes, but we’d like to invite you to participate in next year’s competition.”

“Was it the interview?” I knew we’d fucked it up. I just needed to hear him say it.

“There were a lot of factors involved. The judges heavily weighed the demo as well as the marketability of the music.”

“The marketability,” I repeated. It might have sounded like I was trying to learn something from him. I wasn’t, I just wasn’t in control of my words anymore.

There was a long pause where I was probably supposed to say something. But I didn’t so he cleared his throat. “Thank you for participating. We hope to hear from you again next year.”

I thought about what a year meant. Since Ethan had left me, I’d only been living week to week. The concept of a year was too big to understand right now. The air was too shallow in my room and I had to open my mouth wide just to make sure I was getting enough.

But he was talking in my ear, “Alright then, have a good day.” And the call was ended. I wondered if calling me to say we’d lost had been a minor task on his schedule for the day. If it was the last thing he had to do before his lunch break. Or was it an afterthought entirely. I couldn’t let go of the phone because I wasn’t sure how my hands moved anymore as I stood there waiting for someone else to call back and say it’d been a mistake. We could all laugh and life could go on like it was supposed to.

Should I call the label and double check with someone? Was there something else I could do? Like cut out my tongue or choke up my lungs. Would the story be marketable enough?

In the corner of my room I could feel my guitar staring at me like I’d let it down. I walked over to it and sat on the floor trying to remember what I was supposed to be doing, if there was somewhere I was supposed to be. But I couldn’t remember anymore. Across my room a pile of dirty clothes were spilling over my hamper. Maybe the other band broke up too; maybe they wouldn’t be able to accept. Surely when the universe messes up, it would do what it had to to make things right again.

I reached into my back pocket for my cigarette and was sure my hand was only shaking so much from the coffee. I opened the window and blew the smoke into the flurries. In the countless hours I’d spent waiting for this phone call this past week I’d always been rehearsing how I’d tell Ethan we’d won. I hadn’t planned what I’d say if we lost, so I followed the script I already had.

My phone was still on my bed. I felt like someone should rope it off with police tape.

I dialed his number.

When the beep of the voicemail went off, I was surprised to hear my voice again.

“Ethan,” with my voice so strangled it barely sounded like his name. I took a breath. “If you were ever my friend.” I had to stop to breathe again, unsure why the words were taking so much from me. “You would call me back.”

I hung up and waited. Immediately I started running through the list of excuses I’d been collecting for him these past few weeks; he was at work, he lost his phone, he was sleeping, he was thinking about what to say. But all of them were used up and I knew I had to accept that I’d really lost everything. The band, the contest, Ethan, Henrietta. If Ethan would just have been reasonable. If he would just call me back. Would it be different now, if I talked to him? Would he finally think that I’ve suffered enough? Would he be satisfied that it hurt this much? If I had told him about my stepdad could we have sped the process up? I wish the phone could turn into a gun. I’d shoot every picture of him I owned. I reached into my dresser for the picture curling out of the edges of a notebook.

It was a black and white picture Henrietta had developed for her photography class sophomore year. I took it over to the window with me as I lit another cigarette. Ethan and I were sitting on Henrietta’s back porch. I remember that it was trick-or-treat and her mom had been giving out candy apples. I was biting into one in the picture while Ethan was smiling and raising an eyebrow at me. I’d only taken two bites of it before Bradley asked me if I was going to finish it and I gave it to him. He’d already had three and was forbidden from taking more so there’d be some left for the trick-or-treaters.

For a second I pulled my cigarette from my lips and watched the burning tip, orange and red and I held the picture into the light and smashed my cigarette over his face.

I didn’t feel better, and laughed at the idea that I might have thought I would. I sucked the cigarette again until it flared with color at the end. I looked at my downcast eyes, my fingers clutching the popsicle stick the apple was stuck to, and the stupid way my foot was touching Ethan’s under the table. I took my cigarette and hovered over my own face for a second before dropping the picture. I looked down at my arm and pulled my sleeve back. I brought the cigarette down onto my skin, hating myself for flinching so bad. The cigarette fell into the yard below and again failed to start a fire. I looked at my arm and the mottled skin that curled around the perfectly circular red hole.

I lay back against the floor of my room and stared at the ceiling. It seemed unfair that everything still looked the same after your dreams are taken away. It wasn’t even raining. The sun was cutting through my curtains.

There was something about this weight that felt like it couldn’t be contained by the walls of my bedroom anymore. I was sure it’d crush me if I stayed here. Besides my step-dad was off work at some point, and I didn’t want to listen to whatever sports game through the walls again. I grabbed my coat and stuffed the remainder of Ethan’s vodka into my pocket.

As always, there was no good place to walk. I didn’t care, because I didn’t feel like stopping. Somehow no traffic hit me as I walked with my head down and hands stuffed in my pockets.

When I got to Stark’s Pond I stopped on the bridge and sat on the concrete. I thought about Ethan’s words in the bathroom. He’d been right. It was just a fairytale. Being successful. Breaking away. If South Park was a disease and we were born infected, the cure was surely death. But the bridge over the pond wasn’t high enough, and my best hope would be my head splitting open on one of the rocks poking through the shallow water. I leaned my head against the frozen metal of the railing. I took a sip of the vodka, liking the way it made my tongue curl back into my mouth. I couldn’t decide if I cared that there weren’t any ducks today.

When my phone rang I didn’t answer it. The number was Mike’s, though I’d never actually entered him as a contact. I probably never would. I texted him: _we lsot_

Somehow the misspelling seemed appropriate.

_Where are you?_

I typed the two words and then set my phone aside: _starks pond_

I didn’t know why I told him. Ethan wouldn’t have. He would have smoked a pack of cigarettes and accepted the world hurting him again. But it was laughable to keep counting all the ways I was less than Ethan.

Mike must not have been too far away because one cigarette later he was standing behind me.

“I’m sorry,” he said, sitting down next to me. He was staring at my feet dangling through the spaces between the railing. He tilted his head so his hair slid over his cheeks. I was glad; I didn’t want to see his unnecessary concern telegraphed all over his face.

I nodded, “I expected this,” I said, blinking at the way I couldn’t make the lie sound believable. Even to Mike.

“You shouldn’t have,” he said in a serious tone I didn’t know he was capable of. “You deserved to win.”

I took a shaky breath and choked a little. “They said there were a lot of factors,” I said finally as I stared down at the water running around the rocks. “Marketability.”

Mike didn’t respond. It looked like he was trying far too hard to think of the right thing to say. I didn’t know how to tell him that he would never find it. I looked over at my phone, at the blank screen that didn’t tell me I had a call from Ethan.

“At least you have a demo. You can send it around to other labels.”

“It’s over,” I said shaking my head as I spoke, and then a little after I was done. I lay back against the cement and stared at the sky. Mike’s fingers were coated with charcoal as they clung to the railing, and now that I was looking at him, there were smudges of gray on his jaw.

He was looking down at me with a frown that probably would have been more severe straight on. “I know it feels bad.” His jacket was worn and fraying at the sleeves, what would he be wearing if he could afford it. What would we all be doing if we didn’t have to be doing this.

“It doesn’t,” I told him, knowing he wouldn’t understand but said it anyway, “it doesn’t just feel bad.” It felt like my words were spit into the air and crashed back onto my face. I could feel them sitting on my cheeks.

“I think we should go somewhere,” Mike said. “We can go anywhere you want. To the Black Cat. Or Benny’s. Persh. We can go to my house or anywhere.”

 I wanted to tell him to take me anywhere and find out what that meant.

“Okay,” I said. I was willing to fall back into the part of my personality that liked to follow the leader. I shouldn’t have ever embraced the idea of thinking for myself.

Mike stood up first and I didn’t like the way he watched me follow suit. Like I was a little kid that might run off if he wasn’t careful. Like he was ready to grab the back of my coat and hold me still. He tried to look nonchalant when I reached down for the vodka bottle that still sitting on the cement, like he hadn’t been hoping I’d forget it.

 

**xx.**

We sat at a table in the back. I passed another wad of ones to Mike for the soda he’d gotten for me and poured vodka over the ice. The colored lights were bouncing off the walls from a disco ball hanging from the ceiling. I wondered if anyone was impressed by the effect. Maybe everyone was.

“Are you impressed?” I yelled at Mike as he sipped from a bottle of water.

“What?” he asked, as a diamond of red light passed over his chest.

Everyone here didn’t know yet that their dreams didn’t matter, wouldn’t add up, wouldn’t go as planned. Maybe none of them had dreams. Maybe they all had the memory of goldfish, and smiling for the next three seconds was enough. How would I know?

“Dance with me,” I yelled, wanting to be like them.  But Mike shook his head a bit. The red light overhead made the green in his hair purple. With a little effort I could almost pretend he was another person. I squinted and wondered if his eyes were brown.

“Let’s just sit here,” he said, sliding his hands over the table like he was looking for handlebars. “I want to finish my water.”

“Your water doesn’t matter Mike. We’re all just balloons of blood and organs waiting to die.”

I filled my mouth with vodka and choked when I tried to swallow it. There were tears in my eyes, and Mike grabbed the bottle from me as I wiped my face on my sleeve.

“I’ll dance with you if you stop drinking that for a little, okay?” He’d already warned me three times that I was going to get us kicked out from waving the bottle around. Like it mattered.

I nodded, grabbing the edge of his jacket, and following him into the dense crowd. The room was so filled there was barely any space to move and now that the vodka kicked in it felt like there were people dancing on the walls, on the ceiling. I wanted to go up there too. I forgot Mike was across from me until he put his hand on my shoulder when I missed a step and stumbled into a girl next to me. She tugged her shirt up like I was trying to look down it. A weird laugh gurgled in my throat and I glanced at Mike. He was smiling apologetically for me and I wanted to tell him to stop.

I wanted the world to keep spinning so I would never have to look at it straight on again. There was nothing worth seeing. I threw my hands up and closed my eyes feeling my hair swishing over my cheeks. In my head I was on stage, a guitar strap slung over my shoulder, my hands crushing down on a power-chord. The lights shining on me for my solo. Everyone had cue to look at me. Everyone was waiting to see what I was about to do.

I almost thought I could hear the crowd chanting my name. For a second I thought maybe I’d willed myself into a better universe. I opened my eyes and saw that it may have been Henrietta saying it all along. Mike had stopped dancing and was standing next to me and I stumbled into him until my shoulder hit his.

“You two have to go,” she was saying. Her hands were on her hips. I could feel Mike subtly bunching the fabric of my shirt under his fingers along my back to hold me steady. It was unnecessary but I let him.

“Fuck you,” I said slowly and purposely to Henrietta. She shook her head quickly.

“No, you don’t understand. I’m here with Ethan. I sent him to get drinks when I saw you over here acting like you forgot your own name.” As she was talking my eyes kept drifting to the exit sign over her head.

“I just don’t care,” I said when she’d finished talking. The words seemed to shrug off my shoulders.

“I’ve been talking to him for weeks to convince him to calm down about all this shit, and you’re going to undo all of it.” Her bangs were brushing against her eyebrows as she spoke. The black of her hair was tinted blue. I thought about her dying it without me and tried to remember that I was the one who didn’t want to be her friend.

“You’re wasting your time,” I said. My mouth felt thick and I wanted the bottle of vodka Mike was storing in his pocket. “We’re all just wasting our time.” I was tired of the way Mike was standing there so quietly, like maybe if he didn’t move, Henrietta wouldn’t notice him. I slung my arm around his neck. If there was something more dramatic I could have done, I would have done it.

Henrietta looked over her shoulder nervously and then at me again. I think if she could have hid me under her skirt she would have. She came closer to me and said in a quiet, more serious voice, “I’m doing you a favor right now. You’re making a fool of yourself.” I grinned.

It was so insane to me that after weeks of missed calls to Ethan, endless miles walked to his apartment, and showing up at his work that one time and yelling into the air, that being here without him—I was making a fool of myself. I was laughing before I’d even finished the thought, laughing in her face, as Mike clamped a hand on my shoulder again but I wasn’t going to fall.

Henrietta turned from me, and looked up at Mike. “Take him home, now,” she said firmly and with an annoyed tone like she couldn’t believe that she was having to acknowledge his presence at all.         

“I’m not taking him _home_ ,” Mike was talking quickly now, his voice slightly lower than normal. “Are you kidding me?”

“What is that even supposed to mean?” Henrietta said, as I calmed down, staring at them both, trying to catch up with the conversation.

But Ethan was making his way through the crowd. His hands were in his pockets pulling up the suspenders a bit from his hips, and I was laughing again. It was hurting my stomach so I leaned over, my arms trying to find my legs to press against. From down here I could see all of our shoes. My creepers, Mike’s Toms, Henrietta’s blue ballet slippers, Ethan’s boots. They were all stable against the sticky floor of the club without complaint.  Mike put a hand on my back. “Are you okay?” he said into my ear. I was nodding while trying to catch my breath. I wondered if he thought I was choking. I wondered too.

When I stood back up it was hard not to wince. I wished it was because I was dying and not just from the muscles contracting. What would happen if I died on the floor in front of all of them? Who would walk away first?

Henrietta was yelling something at Ethan that I couldn’t hear over the music, her hand was gripping his arm. His body was positioned away from us like he was ready to leave but he was watching me. It was easy not to care what he was thinking about.

 “Hey,” I yelled up at him, surprised that he was here, that the phone call hadn’t completely taken him out of my world too. “Don’t leave. I’m sure you’ll want to hear the news.” His hair was brushing over the top of his collar in black waves. My eyes traveled along his jaw to the space below his ear I loved to kiss the best because I could reach it without making him bend down.

His eyes slid from me to Mike. “What are you and your vamp tramp getting hitched?”

I laughed too loudly for a clipped second at what he said and turned back to Mike like it was a joke we were all supposed to enjoy together. Mike was thin-lipped and staring at Ethan over my shoulder. When I looked back Ethan was looking at Mike, smug.

“No you fucking dick,” I said, stabbing a finger into his chest, I stumbled a bit at the effort, and he had to grab my arm to stop me from falling into him. I let him hold onto me as I looked up at him to finish my thought. “We lost the contest!” His fingers gripped my arm tighter for just a second after I’d said it. I pulled my arm out of his grasp and took a step back. Henrietta was looking at the floor when I glanced over at her.

Ethan creased his eyebrows and swallowed, “Did we? When did you find out?” He began taking a step toward me, but when I moved backward he stopped.

“Don’t act surprised, it’s what you always knew would happen.”

His eyes were wide under the flashing lights overhead. I thought he almost looked sorry. Not sorry enough to return my phone call. “Dylan—“

I flipped the hair away from my eyes, “It’s what you said; it was just a fairy tale.” Henrietta was chewing on her lip, staring around the room like there might be something she could point to and distract us all.

Ethan looked confused. “I didn’t want us to lose, in fact—“ It was almost unbearable to listen to any more words that could be twisted into hope.

“Of course you did!” My voice seemed to tear through the air, high and loud. I drug my hands through my hair to keep it out of my eyes. I wanted to see the self-satisfaction on his face when he said _I told you so_. But he was just looking over at Henrietta.

“Neither of you cared!” My hair fell back in my face and I gripped it in my fist. “Don’t look at each other! Look at me and fucking tell me how deluded you both knew I was! Fucking say it!”

“Just calm down, god you’re shaking,” he said, reaching for me again. I jerked away, and stepped on Mike’s foot in the process.

“Let’s go sit down Dylan,” Mike said, grabbing my shoulder again, pulling me back towards him. But I couldn’t look away from Ethan. His jaw was tight and his hand hadn’t completely fallen back to his side from where it’d reached for me. When I didn’t say anything Mike stepped in front of me so I was looking at where his flannel shirt was covering the chain of a necklace. He slouched down and said into my ear, “This isn’t helping anything. You have to walk away.”

“Why don’t you fuck off Vamprir,” Ethan yelled.  

I could feel my fingernails pressing into my palms and when Mike turned around to look at Ethan I saw that Ethan had been staring at my balled up fists. But Mike stepped in front of me again. “I think everyone needs to calm down.”

“He’s drunk Ethan, it’s not fair,” I heard Henrietta saying. I wanted to tell her that no interaction between Ethan and I would ever be fair.

Ethan rolled his eyes, and started to step around Mike. But Mike shoved him back, “Back off.”

“What are you, his bodyguard? I just want to talk to him.” Ethan was probably bothered to even have to admit to that much; to have to need Mike’s permission to do anything.

“I don’t think he’ll be talking to you.” I stared at the back of Mike’s neck, where the green and black were combined. I tried to stir up some rage at Mike taking any sort of control over my life, but I knew somebody had to and I clearly wasn’t up to the job.

 “Oh I guess I didn’t realize Dylan was on the clock again. How much did you have to pay him to hang out with you?” I swayed and felt cheap. How did Ethan always have the most painful words stored up?

 “Yeah I’m trying to be a friend right now. But I guess the concept isn’t cynical enough for you to understand.” It was strange, after so many weeks of just me, or just me and Mike, that anyone else was even aware I existed.

Ethan laughed under his breath, “I’m just glad I can understand you at all now that you’ve pulled the plastic fangs from your mouth.” I wanted to leave, catch the bus to Denver, and lay across the stoop of the café.

“Maybe if you’d pull the stick out of your ass we wouldn’t all be here right now.”

“You don’t have to be here at all.” Maybe I was a shape of light projected on the wall and the switch would click and I’d be gone.

“Jesus Christ you’re acting like fucking conformist frat boys right now,” Henrietta yelled, looking like she was trying to decide whether she should grab onto Ethan’s arm or Mike’s. “Stop being such douche bags, it’s boring.”

“I’d almost forgotten what a controlling narcissist you are,” Mike yelled. I wasn’t used to the sharp tone in his voice. When Ethan tried to come around him again Mike shoved harder this time, and Ethan shoved back. I stumbled along with Mike, hanging onto his arm as we ran into a group of girls dancing near us.

Ethan grabbed onto Mike’s jacket to steady him, “Goddamnit can you ever get that moronic smile off your face.” Mike shoved Ethan back and Henrietta had to jump away to avoid being stepped on. There had been so many things I had planned on telling Ethan when I saw him again. I laid on my floor for hours going over both of our parts. And here we were. I couldn’t get a word in and even if I could my vodka-soaked brain was too slow and docile to be of much help.

“Get off of me.” Mike said in a warning tone, his hands on Ethan’s chest shoving him away.

Ethan let him go and shook his head. “Let’s be honest what this is really about.” Over the shoulders of the crowd I could see two bald-headed security guards in yellow polo shirts making their way towards us.

I didn’t want to get in trouble, and I didn’t want to be some damsel in distress that everyone was fighting over. I just wanted to win the contest. And since that hadn’t happened I just wanted to be left alone with the knowledge that I wasn’t good enough. I was backing away from both of them, pushing my way through the crowd. I needed to get out, get away. Sometimes being small had its merits. I thought maybe no one noticed me slinking past them at all. It wasn’t until the cold air hit my cheeks that I realized I hadn’t gotten away at all.

“Where are you going?” Henrietta was trailing after me down the sidewalk.  

“Home,” I yelled back. She caught up with me so I stopped walking and let out a sigh into the air. I thought about all the other places I could go and how none of them felt worth it. They all just felt empty.

“Why don’t you come over to my place? We should talk.” I realized that she wasn’t wearing a coat. She was hugging herself, her hands sliding up and down her arms.

“Why, what will that do?” I said. She was staring at my fingers tugging on the edges of my hoodie. I stopped and stuffed my hands into my pockets.

“I think you need to get to a grip,” she said. “You’re acting completely hysterical. It was just a contest.”

“And you’re just a bitch,” I said. Her face fell and if it hadn’t been Henrietta, if she was any other girl, I would have thought I’d made her cry. The eyelashes she’d glued on stuck out against her skin in a way that made me want to apologize immediately.

Instead I used the opportunity to walk away, knowing the moment would be stuck in my head on repeat, giving me another reason to hate myself.  As I was walking I could hear her yelling something about Ethan, but I didn’t want to be listening anymore.

The walk home took longer than it should have. I kept turning down blocks that all looked the same in the dark. I turned the doorknob of the backdoor slowly and shut it soundlessly as I walked to my room. I could hear commercials talking fast and upbeat from down the hall and closed the door to block the sound.  

I pulled my acoustic guitar into my lap and strummed the opening chords to our demo. My hair hung over my face as I watched my fingers try and find the right position but every note sounded flat and I kept trying again faster. It wasn’t any good though. Everything had turned sour. I felt disturbingly sober even as my fingers caught against the guitar strings, making errors I hadn’t since middle school.

I hadn’t even realized my step-dad was in my room until the guitar was being ripped from my hands. I stared at him and felt nothing.

“I said I’m sick of hearing this,” he said dropping it to the ground. I watched it thud against the carpet, smiling a bit at the way it remained intact. But he was watching me, and swung his foot back and kicked it, making it slam against the wall and crack. The strings didn’t break, and I felt a small bit of satisfaction even as I knew I would never be able to play that guitar again.

“That’s pretty rock-and-roll of you Terry,” I mumbled. Maybe it was alcohol burning a hole through my liver or the way I still couldn’t feel my cheeks from the walk home, but I didn’t care what broke anymore.

“What are you slurring at me you piece of shit?”

I just shook my head like he wouldn’t understand.

“Are you drunk? Well you know what I think?” he grabbed my bangs and jerked my face so I was forced to look at him. I kept my eyes on his mouth, watching the words form from his lips. “You can sleep out in the streets with the rest of the drunks.” I wondered exactly what drunks he meant on the quiet abandoned small town road we lived on.

“Fuck off,” I said, feeling particularly trapped there on my bed. But I knew if I moved that’d be all the incentive he’d need. He hadn’t let go of my bangs, so when he pulled on them hard enough that I was drug from the bed I wasn’t surprised that he didn’t need a reason to hurt me.

“Don’t you fucking touch me,” I said from the floor of my room. I didn’t even mean him. I meant the world, the universe.

He kicked me in the stomach, the side of his boot catching under my rib, and I felt the acidic taste of vomit in the back of my throat. I gagged on it before catching my breath. Both of my hands were flat on the carpet and I tried to force myself up, but he kneed me in the stomach as I tried to stand. And I was mumbling it again under my breath, or I thought I was, I couldn’t hear the words that I was trying to say over and over again; _don’t you fucking touch me_.

I grabbed ahold of his arm, my fingers digging into his bicep. His fist cracked against my jaw and I flew across the floor of my room again. I don’t know what I was trying to do or where I was trying to go, but I was crawling towards the window.

“Come here,” he grumbled.

He kicked me again in the ribs and I flipped over coughing, my hands over my face as he kept kicking, I was sure he was going to kill me. I didn’t open my eyes but my hands were wet, and I knew some part of me was bleeding onto the carpet.

It took me a minute to realize what the noise was in the room; just me wheezing through my mouth. It took me too long to realize that he’d stopped.

“I’m on my way,” he was saying between breaths. “Just play a game without me for fuck’s sake.”

Why didn’t the person on the other end of the call ask him why he couldn’t breathe? Why didn’t anyone ask more questions of one another? I was gripping my face, my knees at my chest, trying to readjust for another blow. But he didn’t even have a parting shot, or anything to say to me as he walked out, shutting the door to my room behind him.

I was choking a bit into where the wall met the carpet. It hurt to breathe and I wondered if I should just stop. I couldn’t even tell which part of my body hurt the worst. When my ribs finished spiking when I inhaled, my face and neck throbbed and I exhaled. The back of my throat felt wet and it was hard to tell if there was blood draining down or bubbling up. The thought alone made my mind retreat in on itself and I must have blacked out a bit.  

When I woke up it was because someone was ringing the doorbell. I groaned and wondered what this would feel like if the alcohol wasn’t numbing it. I shut my eyes and tried not to move. Maybe the doorbell had never rung. It was quiet now. I lifted my arm toward my face to try and assess the damage.  There was knocking at the back door, and I felt each thud in my teeth.

My cellphone was vibrating in my pocket and I pulled it to my face and stared down at Ethan’s name.

“Yeah?” I said in a raspy voice. It felt like all my breath was gone. That my chest was broken. My mouth. My stomach. But over the phone it probably sounded like I’d just woken up.

“Open the door. I need to talk to you.” He was out of breath, but probably not for the same reason. He kept knocking even as he talked, like the house might be appealed to if I wouldn’t listen.

I looked down at my hand clutching the phone and the streak of blood that was on the screen now. What part of me had it come from?

“Go away.”

“I’m not going away. I just got your voicemail from earlier. I’m fucking worried about you.”

“Fuck off.” As I said it I could hear him trying the back door again. I was struggling to sit up, wincing and clutching at my stomach. I managed to lean against the wall, holding my phone away from my face so he couldn’t hear my groans.

“We _are_ better friends than this, I fucked up. I was selfish and—” I couldn’t focus on what he was saying because I was too afraid that he’d find the spare key, that my mom would come home and let him in, that he’d break the lock. He couldn’t see me like this. The thought alone almost made me pass out again.

“Dylan?” I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t listen to Ethan apologize and I couldn’t let him in. I had to convince him to leave.

I took a shaky breath and cleared my throat, trying to be strong for just this sentence, “If this is about losing the contest, it’s fine, it’s really fine,” I said, having to stop halfway through to steady my voice again. “I was just drunk and tired—“ I couldn’t keep talking. Everything that had happed today was balling up in my chest. My breath hitched and I just wanted to _sleep._ I wanted to beg Ethan to leave me alone. Finally we should be on the same page but here Ethan was, demanding to have his way again. I squeezed my eyes shut and pretended I didn’t think I was going to cry.

When I opened them again and glanced down at the phone he’d ended the call. I felt a pang of relief and dropped my hands to my sides. Across the room my guitar was laying string down with a splintering crack up the back of it. I wiped the drying blood from my chin with the back of my hand.

I heard the familiar sliding sound of wood on metal and realized the window I'd opened to smoke earlier was being lifted up, Ethan's long fingers curled under the frame. I glanced over at my bedroom door, and debated trying to make it into the hallway or something before he managed to pull himself in. I grabbed onto my dresser and leaned heavily onto it as I struggled to stand. I had to curl inwards a bit and both of my hands were resting all my weight against the flat wooden surface. My bangs fell over my face and it took every bit of energy to hold the pose. I knew I was stuck here.

 


	13. Chapter 13

_Sorry about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine.”_

_–Richard Siken_

**x.**

I kept my face down as I heard the cheap plastic of the blinds shuffle and slide together as he pulled himself through the window. All the years I’d had this haircut, I was always most thankful for its ability to shield my sleeping in class from teachers and the open-mouthed stares of kids at Benny’s. But it was put to even better use now: hiding the blood I could feel leaking out my nose from Ethan. I licked what I could away, cringing at the metallic taste and the thought of where it’d come from, but it itched and I couldn’t move my hands from the dresser without risking falling over entirely. I held onto the clouded hope that I could make him leave without realizing that anything was wrong. That he wouldn’t care enough to push.

“I haven’t done that in years,” Ethan mumbled, and I heard the window shut again behind him with a solid thud. I didn’t know if he expected me to answer or if he would have said anything to distract me from his failure as my friend.

“Please go,” I said quietly, not trusting myself with more words. I was done fighting for the night, even if Ethan wasn’t. Would he think I should have been able to fight back? Would he expect this from me? Would he think that I had been asking for it? I told myself that I didn’t care what the fuck he thought. But that was too big of a lie to even tell myself. I knew no matter what I had or hadn’t done, I would end up disappointing him in one way or another. I wished he could have walked in and found my dead body on the carpet. My ribs puncturing my heart. I closed my eyes for a second.  

“Jesus, are you still that drunk? Come sit down,” he said, walking closer. I could see the edges of his boots on the beige carpet of my room. They stopped in front of me and I swallowed. I didn’t look up. I couldn’t if I wanted to. I felt outside of myself, watching all of it in a movie. I was at the edge of my seat, fingers pressed hard against the armrests, urging the character on screen to move, to push him away, to do anything but stand still. He put a hand on my back, and I could feel my heart racing, felt present in my body again, and I immediately wanted to lean into his touch and hated that he still had that power over me.

“Fuck, did you break your guitar?” he asked, trying to pull me closer to him. I managed to stay where I was. His fingers dug to the edge of a tender spot. I must have gasped loud enough for him to hear, because his face was suddenly close to mine. “Are you bleeding?” He grabbed my shoulder and forced me to face him. It knocked me off balance and I had to reach a hand out towards him to stop myself from falling over. I should have face-planted into the carpet and left him to the illusion that I was up to my eyeballs in vodka and despite not being drunk the thought still occurred to me too late. His breath hitched and I felt his whole body stiffen as he held me up, and I was glad I at least had the sense not to look at his face.  “Oh god, oh my god,” he slipped an arm around me and pulled me towards him, hugging me to his chest. I was glad because I couldn’t help but bend over, my stomach and my chest felt like they were still being kicked just from the effort of standing. And I hurt too bad to care if Ethan knew it or not anymore, if anyone knew. Because Ethan wasn’t anyone to me, and no matter how shocked he was now, I had to cling to the thought so I wasn’t so surprised the next time he shut the door in my face. He was leading me over to my bed and I didn’t remember a single time we had been sitting there before. Not when we were writing songs together, not when we were kids playing video games, not when we’d skipped school and listened to music for hours. I watched my own shoes shuffle along the carpet between his as I willed myself not to pass out again. We both sat on the edge, and my head was still buried in his chest and I could tell that it took a lot of effort for him to force me off of him, to hold me at arms length, so he could look at me. I kept my eyes on the wet bloodstain on his button-up.

“What happened,” he said, breathless. His fingers were gently tilting my face from side to side, as he inspected the damage. I didn’t fight the movement, even as things kept moving when my head wasn’t. “Dylan?” When it was obvious that I wasn’t going to answer him, he stood up and left the room, and came back in with wads of toilet paper. It was the same cheap one-ply that the school bought. It would take a roll and a half to staunch my still sluggishly bleeding nose. “Hold this to your nose,” he said, dabbing my cheek. “Hey, can you look at me?” I thought about it for a second, as my hand pressed the toilet paper he’d given me to my nose and then shook my head. He put the bloodstained toilet paper onto his knee. “You have to tell me what happened, you have to tell me if you’re okay.” He was speaking so softly, so nicely to me, and I wanted to do whatever he asked of me.

“It hurts,” I said without meaning to. And I couldn’t tell if he was relieved to hear me talk or upset from what I’d said.

“Okay.” He let out a breath. I needed him to stop taking this so seriously. I needed him to go back out the window because it was getting harder to convince myself that I was alright. That I didn’t just need to catch my breath and stop giving in to feeling sorry for myself. “Where?”

I moved my free hand to the general area of where I’d been kicked. He was unzippering my hoodie, pulling it off my arms, and lifting my shirt up. It felt like my arms were moving independently of my mind. Like Ethan had taken control of them. “Who did this to you? Tell me,” he said firmly, running his fingers lightly over my chest where I was sure bruises were already forming. I didn’t want to look, I didn’t want to know what he was seeing. I didn’t want to know the extent of what had really happened.

I considered telling him a whole gang of people had beaten me. They could have cornered me on the walk home. Maybe there had been a gun pointed at my head. I suddenly understood why women were so quick to tell doctors they’d fallen down steps. Maybe I could tell Ethan that. He was holding my hand and I knew I couldn’t lie, so I just said nothing.

“Please talk to me,” he said, his voice breaking.  He carefully pulled my shirt back down and ran a finger over my neck where I wondered if there was another mark before burying his face against my shoulder. “I think we should go to the hospital,” he said into my shoulder. I sat there feeling his tears on my neck. At first I thought it was my blood, spouting from a new place on my body, but his back was shaking and he took a few deep breaths.

“No,” I tried to say like it was an extreme course of action. “I’ll be okay. I just need to lay here for a little bit.” I wished my voice could rise above a harsh whisper. It wasn’t the first time I’d been kicked in the ribs in the past month. I knew I just needed to sleep this off. Tomorrow we could all go back to pretending that nothing had changed. Ethan wasn’t used to this; I had to let him know that the blood was making it look so much worse.  Anyway, all a visit to the hospital would get me is two Tylenol and a call to my mom.

“How did this happen?” he asked again, his face still pressed against my neck, and I realized I couldn’t keep ignoring the question. But it felt so good that he was touching me at all, and I closed my eyes and wrapped an arm around him, rubbing his back, letting myself have the moment. I could almost pretend that we weren’t here, that he we were in his apartment waiting for the Chinese food delivery guy, that we were getting ready to play another movie. I stopped moving my hand and pressed my fingertips into the space next to his spine. If I just held on, maybe, for once it could stay like this long enough for me to feel comfortable.

He pulled away from me, and I opened my eyes. He was wiping his eyes on his hands. “I’m sorry,” he said. I didn’t know for what I just wanted him to come back. His voice become steadier as he spoke, “But, fuck, Dylan. Tell me what happened right now.” I dropped my hand from his back. I didn’t want him to be angry at me again, I knew how that felt. I tried to think of the easiest way to tell him.

“My step-dad was upset that I came home drunk,” I said, glancing up quickly. His eyes were staring at the round burn mark on my wrist. I pulled my arm away from my face, my nose had probably stopped bleeding anyway.

“Your step-dad?” Ethan said, like he was searching for some background information he didn’t and couldn’t have to make sense what I’d said. Because I’d never told him, because I never wanted him to know. I still didn’t, but I should have known it wouldn’t be up to me.

“He’s a dick,” I said, like it should explain everything. But the words were too light and we both knew it, it sounded like I was explaining why I couldn’t stay out on a school night. Not why I breathing so shallowly, why I was leaning forward with one arm around my stomach, why my lips were sticky with blood.

Ethan shook his head like he’d have to think about it later. “We’re leaving.” He stood up and grabbed my messenger bag hanging from the doorknob of my closet. “What do you want me to pack for now?”

But it felt like I’d exhausted whatever part of me could still function socially. I wanted to curl on my side and pull the covers over my head. I wanted to tell Ethan that he didn’t need to do a thing. That this wouldn’t happen again for awhile now. He could go home and I would be fine for at least two days if I didn’t do anything too annoying. And since my guitar was broken that was one less thing on the list. But I didn’t want to alarm him, he was already pulling t-shirts out of my drawer and stuffing them into my bag like we were running from the law. Or going on a vacation, I couldn’t tell which I liked better because they were both so much more interesting than leaving my house after my step-dad beat me. I just wanted him to take the news more like Mike had. With a hesitant stare and effortless words. And no action. But the thought hadn’t fully formed before he was resting his hand on my shoulder. “Let’s go.”

I let him put my hoodie back over my arms and zipper it up before pulling me up from the bed, not because I wanted to leave with him, but because I knew that once whatever pity and maybe guilt he was feeling right now wore off, he’d remember how much he hated me. He’d remember how little he cared, and I’d make the long walk down the hallway of his apartment building again. It was the same impulse that kept me poking my bruises as we went. I had to know what both sides felt like. I had to remind myself what it felt like to have Ethan want me around so I could hurt that much more exquisitely when he inevitably decided I wasn’t worth it again. He had my messenger bag slung over his shoulder as he gripped me tight and walked us out to his car. He lit a cigarette before he pulled away from the curb and I noticed his hand shaking a bit against the wheel. He was probably cold. I turned away from him.

I wondered if in another universe I was sitting in Ethan’s passenger seat as we drove down the stretch of highway between South Park and Denver, waiting to put our signatures on a record contract. Georgie and Henrietta would be in the back, deciding on the appropriate way to celebrate afterwards, crafting playlists of all our favorite songs, telling me that they knew we’d win all along. We’d be driving in the middle of the night, unable to wait for morning. We could rent a room on the knowledge that’d it’d be the first of a tour full of hotels. I could feel blood again. My hands were both over my face, cupping my nose, leaning against the headrest, and breathing quietly through my mouth.

We were in the parking lot outside his apartment. I said nothing as I let him help me inside, his hand pressed hot against my waist and my arm dramatically slung over his hunched shoulders. It was unnecessary but I leaned into his side, glad it was late enough to avoid any neighbors. It was too short of a walk to his door, and he was leaving me in the living room while he disappeared in the direction of his bathroom. On his living room table was my copy of _The Sound and Fury_ that I would have left here weeks ago. It was a school book that I’d printed my name in the front cover of. My teacher had been asking about it, and I’d looked under my bed, and in the recesses of my locker. And here it was; Ethan’s ticket to talk to me, had he ever wanted to use it. He hadn’t.

I sat down on his sofa and wished I hadn’t come here at all. The ticking countdown was too loud in my ears and I sat closer to the edge of the sofa as I waited for the other shoe to drop. Ethan reappeared, standing in the doorway and staring at the side of my face for a moment before coming toward me. He had a wet washcloth and a bottle of Advil. He sat them down on the table and went to get a glass of water. And I could suddenly look at him again. At his fingers trying to pry open the bottle, the washcloth he’d set on the table by his leg, the way his lips were torn in a frown. Maybe I should offer to take my book off his hands and leave before I ruined that washcloth with my blood.

“You can take me to Henrietta’s you know,” I mumbled, suddenly furious with myself for letting him bring me here. The collar of his shirt was ripped and I wondered if Mike had done it or the security guards. Either way, that’s where Ethan had been when I’d been getting my ribs kicked in. What had he been doing every other time?

“I don’t want to,” he said quietly, shaking two blue tablets into his palm and holding them out to me. But there was too much significance in the gesture now, and I could see him begging me to take what he was offering me. I stared at him, glancing at the green numbers on the stove in the kitchen. It was 2AM but Henrietta would still drive here if I told her I wanted her to. I thought of my cellphone abandoned on the floor of my room.

“Give me your phone, I’m not staying.” If I thought I could walk more than the five steps to the door by myself I’d get up and do it. I may have been too shaken up to remember the weeks of Ethan pretending like we didn’t exist on the same planet before but everything was thrown back into the light now, and I wasn’t going to soak up his pity because he was willing to give it.

“Let me fucking call Henrietta,” I said, hitting his hand away so the pills fell to the floor. My head throbbed in sympathy and I wanted so badly to believe that mind over matter was an actual  phenomena that could be bent to my needs if I just tried hard enough. I reached my hand towards him where I could see the top of the screen sticking out of his pants pocket. I gasped and grabbed my side. I looked up at him standing there, pulling his phone from his pocket and sitting it on the table in the kitchen. “You’re such a dick, it’s unbelievable” I yelled. “Don’t look at me like that! Don’t look at me like you care! You can’t pick and choose when you care about me!”

I was choking with the effort of the words, and leaning forward again.

He rushed back over to me, and kneeled down on the floor in front of me, “Dylan, please, I’m sorry!” He looked so unsure of himself that I couldn’t look at him anymore. Was any of it real? Or was his guilt strangling him, making him play at being my friend again until his penance had been paid off?

I leaned my head back and felt the blood draining down my throat. “We’re all sorry. Sorry for being born here. Today I lost us our only chance from this hick town. And what did I do to deserve it,” I turned my head to the side and stared at the washcloth leaking on the table. “Burning toast. Or shutting a door too loud while the TV is on. Playing my guitar. I wrote every song we’ve ever played on it. And he broke it.” The pills stood out vividly on the floor by his feet, an unnatural blue, and I felt sorry that he’d brought them to me. Sorry I’d made them fall. “Ethan,” I said, noticing him again for the first time, his fingers gripping the table, his brown eyes soft and bright, “what are we going to do?”

My eyes pinched shut and I couldn’t stop myself from crying for another second. I tried not to breath too heavily because I was pulling too harshly against my ribs, but the more I thought about that, the more I needed to. Ethan pulled me close to him, running his hands over my back and through my hair, telling me that everything was going to be okay. Once I read that that was all people really wanted out of life, someone to tell them that everything was going to be okay. And I thought about that, and how it definitely wasn’t true. But it felt good to feel his voice against my ear, and his lips pressing lightly against my temple like he wasn’t sure if he was allowed.

After a while I wasn’t crying anymore, I wasn’t even sure if I could ever cry again, I was just breathing in choked little gasps that were beginning to level out. My cheek was pressed against his chest, and I felt so tired, like I’d hadn’t sleep at all these past six weeks. I was sure he was kissing the top of my head lightly like he thought maybe I wouldn’t notice, but of course I did because I was always anticipating ways Ethan might touch me, might love me.

When he pulled away I wouldn’t unclench my fingers from his shirt. “I want to clean off the cut on your cheek,” he said, “I’ll be right back.” I thought his time would be better spent here, but I let him go.

He came back with a wet washcloth and cleaned up my face, swabbing at my cheek with a cotton ball. I stared at the supplies on the table he kept reaching for. I could tell that I must have looked better because I could see the tension easing from his face. He sat back and reached for another cotton ball before grabbing my hand.

He turned it over so my palm was up. I didn’t know what he was doing until he pulled my sleeve back. “I didn’t know your step-dad smoked,” he said, before bringing the cotton ball down on the cigarette burn. I hissed and jerked my arm back

“Fuck!” I said as he held my arm still. He was blowing on the wound, and the pain retreated in waves. The red circle was bubbling white as he peeled a bandaid. He stood up and disappeared into his room for a second.

“You should change,” he said, placing one of his Sisters of Mercy t-shirts on my knee. I’d never be able to wear the shirt I spent today in again even if there wasn’t blood rimming the collar. His clean shirt against my skin felt more promising than the bandaid on my wrist, and I tried not to think of my own t-shirts that I’d watched Ethan pack.

“Drink this,” he said, putting the glass in my hand. I did what he wanted, anything to get to bed quicker. And every small effort towards

I let him help me to his bed. I closed my eyes and listened to him put things away in the living room. My body was so tired, but I didn’t want to sleep until he came back. When he did, the button-up shirt he’d been wearing was replaced by a softer t-shirt, and I didn’t wonder if it would be okay first, before I wrapped my arms around his neck. He turned the light off.

“Ethan?” I asked, not really thinking he was sleeping or that he wanted to be.

“Yeah?” I pressed my lips together.

“Can we forget everything for just a minute. And everything can go back to normal afterwards. But will you kiss me, just for a minute?” I spoke so softly that I wasn’t entirely sure I had managed to ask, but the way his muscles tensed up let me know that I had.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

I could tell he was thinking about it. Weighing the options in some sort of Ethan-logic of moral objectivity. Even if he said no, I wouldn’t blame him. Even if he said no I wouldn’t feel strange laying here sprawling across him. But he didn’t say no, he tilted my chin up and leaned down and kissed me in the dark. It wasn’t in the typical needy way that we usually pressed against one another. It was desperate and disordered, but the whole time I could tell he was being careful not to bump against my nose, and it made me love him in the way that made me want to mumble it against his lips. But I knew I couldn’t. So I sucked his lower lip and listened to his breath hitch just a bit before releasing it. And when he kissed me again, his lips swollen and warm, I knew we’d have to stop soon. He seemed to have the same idea, because his head was against the pillow again, but I could still taste him. And I thought about how he could still taste me as I closed my eyes and stopped forgetting everything. But everything didn’t seem so big or important or insurmountable, because while we were kissing I didn’t think about any of it, and I didn’t care if we ever talked about it if he could just let me kiss him like that again tomorrow. I wanted to stare at the side of his face until morning, just so he couldn’t disappear, or make me think that none of this had happened.

I woke up to loud knocking, and Ethan shifted and untangled his arms from me and the sheets. Light was shooting in from under the blinds, and he was throwing on a pair of jeans. The knocking only got louder, and I could hear his cellphone going off in the next room. “Jesus,” he mumbled, glancing over at me before leaving the room.

“Shit, get in here,” I heard him say.

“Is Dylan here?” Henrietta said, choosing to cut to the point. “He’s not at his house and his cellphone is dead.”

“Yeah,” Ethan said, “he’s sleeping.”

“Well I don’t care, I want to see him,” Henrietta said, obviously on her way towards the bedroom.

“I’ll have him call you later,” Ethan said. I knew he was covering for me. Giving me an opportunity to hide my bruised face from Henrietta. I was interested in that anymore.

“It’s fine,” I said to him, standing in the doorway of his room.

“Jesus Fuck!” Henrietta was rushing over to me, wrapping her arms around me so her hair tickled my nose. I tried not to choke on the fumes of her hairspray. “What happened?” she asked, pulling back and staring at me. I thought of all the answers I had come up with to tell Ethan last night, but it was hard to even remember how any of them had felt believable.

“My step-dad,” I said.

“Well I’ll fucking hit him with a fucking baseball bat,” she said, tucking my hair behind my ears as her eyes darted over my face. “Oh Dylan, I knew something was wrong.” She was leading us over to the sofa, “That night in my garage, I shouldn’t have let you leave,” she said. It was strange to hear it from her. If anyone else had told me Henrietta would be saying this, being sympathetic to anyone, I would have rolled my eyes at how little they knew her. She was made out of nails. I smiled and she must have taken it in thanks because she nodded, like it was all taken care of.

Henrietta turned to Ethan, “don’t you have anything for Dylan to eat? It’s 10AM and he looks fucking malnourished.”

Ethan looked towards his kitchen and stuck his hands in his pocket, not bothering to check. “I can go get something,” he said slowly, obviously waiting for Henrietta to tell him to forget about it. I didn’t want him to leave either.

“Yeah, get three blueberry bagels, cream cheese, and coffee from Tweak Bros,” she said. I could barely believe it when he listened to her and went to get his wallet. But Henrietta never asked questions she didn’t already know the answer to. There was no option not to comply.

“Should I get anything for Dylan and me too?” he asked dryly.

 She rolled her eyes. “ _Ha ha_ , a fat joke.” But it felt slightly more normal, and neither of them were really upset. There was nothing to be upset about.

“Okay, I’ll be right back then,” he said slowly and purposely in a way that wasn’t making sense.

Henrietta was annoyed by it, “Yeah, _okay_ , I know.”

“So…” Ethan said, trailing off and shooting her a meaningful look. I wondered if I was supposed to ask what they were talking about. If they wanted me to ask so they could tell whatever story they had together. It was too much to figure out, and the air felt too fragile to be inciting arguments.

Henrietta ignored it and eventually Ethan grabbed his keys and walked out the door. I tried to decipher what was going on between the two of them, but it felt like the script to a poorly written play that I stepped into during the third act.

“You should have told me,” she said distracting me as she put a cigarette between her lips. “There’s no fucking reason you could give that would excuse not telling me. And I’ll tell you another thing, you’re not going back there. I’ll help you pack up your stuff. And you know my mom will let you live in our guest room. And I swear to god, if that dick lays a finger on you, I’ll put a bullet between his eyes, I don’t even care.” It was hard not to feel threatened myself, and I folded my arms over my chest to hide that my hands were in fists.

The cigarette wasn’t even lit, it seemed like she had too many words to get out before bothering lighting it.

“And you know, fuck us not hanging out anymore. Because I’m over it and you should be too. I’m sorry what I said made Ethan break up with you. And I’m sorry we lost the contest. But listen to me, we can never not be friends, because that’s not how this works.” I could tell that some version of this speech had been building up for awhile now, and the firmness of which she said it made it feel unchangeable and true, and I didn’t question it. I wanted to tell her that she hadn’t made Ethan do anything. That he only did what he wanted to and Henrietta would never be the one to change that.

“Okay,” I said, not going to fight how easy she was making it for me, “give me a cigarette.”

She lit both of ours and we leaned back against the sofa, enjoying the absence of the weight between us.

“I’m glad you’re with Ethan,” she said finally. “He looked like he didn’t sleep at all. I’m sure he blames himself entirely for this.” She looked caught between smug and upset at the thought. I didn’t want Ethan to cling to this as another way he was persecuted, or another thing he had to feel guilty about. It had nothing to do with him.

“He was just there when I was covered with blood,” I said, resting my foot against the table. By now I knew better than anyone the way Ethan thought. He would remember that he didn’t find me that interesting or worth it soon enough.

“What does that mean?”

I shrugged. “It’ll pass.” It was the same with everything.

Henrietta stubbed her cigarette into the ashtray on the table, laughing under her breath.

“You can’t really think that.”

“He ignored me for weeks. My phone calls. He wouldn’t answer his door. The day I went to his work, he hid in the back room. He couldn’t even look at me. He thinks I’m some sort of slut incapable of honestly. And I guess that would all be forgivable if I thought that he had _ever_ planned on making the slightest attempt to repair our friendship.”

Henrietta was staring down at her crushed cigarette in uncharacteristic silence. The sort of silence that had a shape of its own and I could feel it pressing on my chest.

“What?” I said in response to it.

“There’s just more going on than you know about.”

“Well whose fault is that?” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. I looked at the messy piles of books and records on his kitchen table, a notebook lying open. I turned back to her. “What is it?”

She picked at the edge of her nail, obviously trying hard to think of something diplomatic to say, she was probably out of practice. “You two need to talk. But don’t be so quick to judge what’s been going on. That’s all.” It was unnecessarily cryptic.

“Christ, just tell me. What are you, 14-years-old?”

“I found out by accident. You know how he is. Now shut up, I hear him coming.”

Ethan came in with a plastic bag wrapped around his wrist and coffee carrier in his hand. I looked him over, like there might be some sign on him; a hospital bracelet or track marks on his arms, I didn’t know. But he was just pale and tired looking like Henrietta had said.

“That weird blonde kid was working. He always drops my change all over the counter. Does he do that to everyone, or should I smile at him or something next time?” I looked at the floor. I didn’t know if I wanted everyone to pretend we were three months in the past. That it had apparently decided without me left me feeling flatfooted and unsure.

“That kid needs to make himself a Ritalin smoothie,” Henrietta said.

Ethan laughed as he set everything on the kitchen table before gathering all the books off the surface so we could sit down.

“Grab the Advil to take with your coffee,” Henrietta told me as we followed Ethan into the kitchen. My abdomen did ache in a dull way. In a different time, I would have told Henriette, thanks mom, but now it felt too close to something I wanted to be true to say out loud. I pulled the lid off my coffee to cool it down faster.

Henrietta stayed well into the afternoon, insisting that Ethan play _A Clockwork Orange_ , since she hadn’t seen it in “too long,” and then _Tokyo Story_ which she’d never watched at all, but had been meaning to “since forever.” It was amazing all the topics she could find to talk about that didn’t involve the band, our personal lives, or the past six weeks. I laid on the sofa, feeling slightly dulled by the painkillers as Henrietta sat on the floor and paged through Ethan’s zine collection. Ethan was strewn over the chair by the door glancing up at the movies every so often from the notebook he was scribbling in. It was obvious she was trying to act as some sort of buffer between us, afraid to leave until she was assured that we were both collected enough to be left alone together. It all felt so natural though, being with my friends, shut inside, barely following the story line of a movie I’d watched before. When Henrietta finally stretched her arms and sighed during the credits, I wanted to suggest another movie. Ethan looked hopefully over at her, with a raised eyebrow that she ignored.

“It’s dinner time. God knows there’s nothing to eat here. Do you want to come back with me Dylan? My mom is making spaghetti and we can ask her about the guest room.”

I wasn’t ready for the question.

“She won’t say no. Look at you,” Henrietta said, seeming to feel the need to assure me in some way. It wasn’t reassurring. I didn’t want to think about what I looked like.

“We can order pizza,” Ethan cut in. As if all of this was really about food.

“I don’t really feel like shocking your mom tonight anyway,” I said, not raising my head from the sofa as the credits scrolled. My bruises shouldn’t be some bargaining chip for free rent. Although, I couldn’t be sure that that wasn’t what was already happening with Ethan. I had to stay at least another night, if he was willing to let me, if only to find out what was going on with him. “If that’s okay,” I said, turning to him.

“Yeah, of course.  I want you to stay here—if you want to,” he said softly. Henrietta was making a face at the sentiment.

“Alright, well I’ll call you two later. We need to get your stuff out of your house no matter what happens. I guess I won’t see you in school tomorrow.”

I shook my head, “I’ll see how much of this has faded by Tuesday.”

She nodded, and looked over at Ethan before she left like she wanted to take him out in the hall and make him promise to keep me warm or something.

When the door shut behind her I turned back to the TV, but it had returned to the menu, and there wasn’t anything I could even pretend to watch.

Ethan was still in the chair, and I was sure he was staring at me.

“Sorry I should have said something earlier,” he began, “but I want you to stay here, for however long you want to.”

“Thanks,” I said flatly, really just wondering if that meant he’d kiss me again tonight under the covers of his bed.

“I know I’ve been really fucking absent and it unfair—“ he began. But I wasn’t ready to talk about this. And I wasn’t ready to know whatever excuse he had up his sleeve that seemed enough for Henrietta.

“Were you serious about ordering pizza?” I asked. On the sofa I drug my wrist along the cushion until I could feel the curling pain of the cigarette burn. Ethan was staring at the piece of my sleeve that covered it.

There was a long pause where I wondered if I had actually said it out loud.

“Yeah,” he said, walking towards the kitchen to grab his phone. I couldn’t see his face as he reached for a menu pinned to the fridge. “Just cheese?”

“Yeah.”


	14. Chapter 14

_Every time I learn the truth about something, I'm disappointed._

_-Chuck Klosterman_

**x.**

 

I kicked the hardened snow off the side of the pavement as I walked towards Ethan’s apartment. He’d tried insisting on picking me up from school everyday for the first two weeks I’d been staying with him. Once he’d even shown up, parked in his usual spot, tapping his fingers against the steering wheel. I knew he’d watched me change directions and spin on my heel after I’d spotted him  to walk the long way to his apartment. Because something had changed and we both had to acknowledge it.

My stuff was still in duffel bags on the floor of his room from the night Henrietta and I had packed up my old life. Ethan had cleared out two drawers for me that were still empty, and even though my shirts are always wrinkled from being crammed into bags, he doesn’t press the issue.                                        

I hadn’t needed to use the key he’d made me to open the door. He was always there pulling it back for me at 3:30, or later when my shifts at Harbucks ended. I hadn’t quite worked out how he’d managed to accommodate his schedule at the record store to match mine, but I tried not to give it too much thought. But today Ethan’s long fingers weren’t pulling the door back for me, his collared shirt he liked to button so close to his chin wasn’t in view, and I reached for the spare key that had fallen to bottom pocket of my messenger bag and untangled it from some gum wrappers.

While I didn’t doubt Henrietta’s claim that there was something more going on with Ethan than I knew about, the signs of it hadn’t made themselves apparent to me. If there was something he was hiding, or something he was struggling with, it was something he didn’t want to share. And who was I to pry when I was clearly no longer someone he chose to confide in.

But now the apartment smelled like burning coffee, and I flicked the off switch before washing away the chunky grinds burned against the glass pot. I sat it back in the sink to soak and stared at the box of mac and cheese sitting out on the counter half opened. Henrietta had reported to him weeks ago that I’d been skipping lunch in favor for an extra smoke break, and while I had managed to stop myself from bringing the tip of my cigarette back down onto my skin, the urge flared up every time I took the filter away from my lips.

I told myself that none of this mattered. And I refilled the coffee pot and sat down at the kitchen table, reaching for my sketch book. Tomorrow my visual journal was due, and my art teacher agreed that if I did two extra sketches she’d drop a project I’d never handed in from the weeks I’d skipped school. Sometimes it was amazing how easy certain things became once any effort was made. Other times it was disheartening how insurmountable things became when tremendous effort was put forth. The trick, I guess that’d I’d never learned was knowing when to try and when not to.

The past couple weeks when the apartment felt too crowded with Ethan’s presence, I’d found myself texting Mike or meeting up with him for a cup of coffee at Tweeks. I’d listen to him talk about the evils of GMOs. Sometimes it felt nice to have someone explain something to me that felt threatening but I knew couldn’t actually hurt me. I had to pretend to be outraged on Mike’s behalf when he told me they could take a year off our life spans. Other time he would talk to me about his band, and I’d offer suggestions. I wondered if was really interested in my opinions or if it was they only surefire way to get me talking.

I tapped my pencil against my pad and stared at the door, trying to think of a reason to call Ethan, trying to think of some legitimate excuse he wouldn’t see through. But finding none, I continued to fill the outlines of my project until the tip of my pencil was flattened against the wood.

By the time the front door finally opened, I’d drank my way through two pots of coffee and my fingers shakily dropped the pencil onto my sketch book. Ethan slid the door open quietly, obviously expecting—or hoping that I’d be asleep. I’d insisted on curling up on the sofa since the first night we’d spent together, and he immediately glanced there before finding me alert and wide-eyed at the table.

“Hey,” he mumbled before looking down and swinging his keys between his fingers like we both didn’t know something was wrong. But something was so apparently not okay, from the way his shoulders were slumped and his shirt was crumpled, he had to know that I knew, he’d have to at least give me that much credit.

“What’s going on?” I asked, because the coffee made everything seem impossibly more urgent than it already was. And the urge to know what was wrong when Ethan looked so tired and small was impossible to fight.

He glanced uncertainly back over at me, and walked close enough to set his keys on the table. My fingertips and the sides of my hands were smudged gray with charcoal, and I wiped them against my pants leg as he slumped into the seat across from me.

“They called me into the store late to finish an order,” he mumbled. He was lying. I felt heart drop a bit because this was it; we’d finally arrived at where we’d both been driving towards for months; we were strangers.

“Okay,” I said, “you forgot your name-tag though.”

We both looked over at the laminated badge hanging from the closet doorknob with his name traced in bold sharpie letters.

“I guess people still needed music huh?” he said in an unfazed way that only Ethan could pull off.

He stood up and walked over to the cupboard, opening it and closing it a few times before retrieving the box of mac and cheese on the counter. “Are you hungry?” he asked, already grabbing a pot drying next to the sink.

“Nah.” I closed my drawing pad and stood up, annoyed at the way I’d allowed myself to bend over at the same angle for so long. My ribs still hurt from time to time, so if the fact that I was fragile and beaten managed to slip from my mind for a bit, it wasn’t too long before it came sharply into focus. Ethan’s curls slipped from behind his ears and hit against his cheeks as he read the directions on the cardboard box, like it was suddenly something complex he’d never done before.

“I can make something else,” he called after me, as if I could really go very far. The apartment suddenly felt pinched, like I would hit a wall if I turned too quickly. I retrieved my hoodie from the top of my messenger bag and walked towards the door. Maybe it was finally time to give into Henrietta’s demands that I live with her.

“I’ll be back.”  I turned to look at him leaning over the burners on the stove, watching waiting for the water to boil. The burners weren’t even lit. I wondered if he knew.

“Ethan?” When I said his name he jumped like he’d already expected I’d gone. Part of me felt like that was true.

“Yeah?” his voice broke over the word, and I walked closer to him. His body was tense as his arms stuck out straight, his fingers gripping tight onto the counters, like it was the safety bar on a rollercoaster that he couldn’t bring himself to trust. A button in the center of his shirt was undone, and I felt like maybe I could slip my fingers through the unsecured fabric and feel his heart again.

“What is it?”

I wanted to cover his hand with mine, but the edges of my chipped nail polish seemed tacky and expected suddenly and I didn’t want Ethan to have to think about it.

He shook his head lightly for a second and I was sure he wouldn’t tell me. But then he glanced over at my face with that same ghost of a grimace he’d given me since my nose had turned three shades of purple and bled at random for the first couple days I’d moved in.

“My mom is in the hospital,” he said through a sigh, “a neighbor found her sucking in car exhaust for breakfast last month. Now that she’s finally stabilized, I’ve been getting her settled in a facility outside of Denver, because she needs constant surveillance, but last night she tried to check herself out, and when they wouldn’t let her, she refused to eat until she spoke to me. I told them to put a feeding tube in.”

“Oh,” I mumbled, not liking the detached way he recounted it all.

“It’s nothing I’m not used to.”

I shifted my weight onto my other foot followed his gaze to the unlit burner. I thought of the years of Ethan’s silence on any issue involving his mother’s depression. “I know,” I said.

His lip turned up for a second and he looked back at me, like he was seeing me again for the first time, and I felt like there was finally something I could offer him. These last few weeks I wondered if Ethan was only keeping me around as some sort of perchance for his guilt. Like a box of old birthday cards you didn’t want but you also didn’t have the heart to throw away.

“It’s fine really,” he said, his eyes glancing over my face. I wondered what he was seeing. “I just keep getting calls from doctors, and I can’t always be there, and I don’t always want to answer.”

“Yeah, I would feel the same way.” I watched my hand, like it was someone else’s’, slide across his back, my fingers jutting across the black and white vertical stripes of his shirt. He closed his eyes for a moment and I felt bad when I let my hand fall to my side again and he opened them again.

I wanted to say that I was glad he was telling me any of this. Because all those missed calls and unanswered texts from him shifted into a new focus now. Because just saying the words out loud seemed to loosen the muscles in his shoulders.

He looked uncertainly over at me, his dark eyes searching my face for hints of who he might be seeing a year ago. A Dylan who would be glad to come running if he’d written a particularly clever hook to a song. A Dylan who wouldn’t hold his hand, but could hold his own chin up. I ducked my head down now until my bangs fell back over my eye, and looked at the tiled floor.

“Do you want to go to the diner?” He set the box of mac and cheese back on the counter. “Honestly I feel fucked in the head and don’t want to do anything beyond pointing to something on the menu.”

“Okay.” I followed him out the door, sneaking glances at him on the walk outside.

Our feet chopped up the snow as we crossed the diner parking lot and no one inside was surprised to see us together. To them, we’d always been inseparable and uniquely paired up like the old man and his crossword that always sat in the corner booth with a bic rolling under his palm.

Sitting across from Ethan like this almost felt like time travel, and our usual overwrought waitress huffed and set our coffee down like we’d been there every night draining her of customers.

“The thing is Dylan,” he began, like this was the tail end of something we needed to finish and not the introduction of a new idea. “I know it fairly and obviously seemed like I was ignoring you for so long because I was upset with you. And I was, at first.”

I poured a packet of sugar into my coffee, not because that’s what I wanted, but because I needed something to do with my hands. I felt like this conversation was happening _at_ me, _at_ my body, because in my head I was down the street glancing at glowing light of the diner in the distance—glad I wasn’t in there. In my head Ethan’s leg wasn’t bobbing on the vinyl plastic booth making the table quiver under my arms in a way I pretended not to notice.

He took a breath and I wondered if this would ever be over, if we’d ever be walking out the door to the diner again or if I’d be stuck here forever listening to him so softly and so purposely explain himself because it was tearing my stomach to shreds.

“And all the shit I said about Mike, I was hurt and striking out anyway I could. It wasn’t like me. And the way you looked then. Well, when you refuse to eat meals with me, or stay in the same room when I put in a movie—” He paused and I could see his jaw clench as he stared at me. I was sure he still saw the  blood dripping off my chin sometimes by the way he’d have to blink so long to clear the image. He sighed, “I don’t think you’re unjustified.” He glanced down at his hands with disgust, seemingly for being a part of him, “I get it.”

Suddenly I did feel unjustified. I wanted to go back every time I’d moved away from him, walked past him, looked down to avoid eye contact and make myself stay still. I wanted to grab his hand, and kiss his fingers, and tell him that I had never been hit or hurt or even upset at all. That that had all happened to a different Dylan. And he was gone now.

“The day after we had that argument, I was going to meet you at your house to try and work things out, when I got the phone call about my mom. I felt like everything was tearing me down the middle. And I thought—” he laughed a little under his breath, “that you could wait.”

Outside the snow was hitting against the glass and I was sure I could hear the soft prickling noise they made with every strike. That’s all I wanted to think about.

The waitress was refilling our mugs now, her nails a garish pink under the diner light. There was probably some excuse I could make to get up and leave, but I didn’t even want to. Ethan was just being honest, and if I didn’t have any consolation to offer him, he couldn’t hold me accountable. Things were bad for everyone. That didn’t make me feel better.

“Dylan?”

“Yeah,” I said, intent on interrupting this conversation, “actually—can you pass the creamer.” He made a face but didn’t say anything as he pushed the ceramic bowl across the table.

“Move over losers,” Henrietta said, as Georgie plopped down into the booth next to me. “Glad to see you’ve both remembered to properly caffeinate your sadness.” She smacked the creamer out of my fingers. “Don’t be a pussy.”

I sipped my coffee as Georgie stopped the creamer from rolling off the edge of the table. Henrietta threw her cellphone to the center of the booth where it smacked with a thud. “Damien thinks he can keep exploding my phone. He needs to realize I’m not beyond putting a bullet through the screen if I see his number cross it one more time.”

Henrietta looked from me to Ethan and her sigh filled the booth. The waitress came and she ordered a plate of blueberry pancakes after admonishing Georgie for getting a grilled cheese off the kids menu. She struck a blueberry with the side of her fork until gooey juice spilled out from under it.

We could hear the people’s conversations at the tables surrounding us, and I could tell we were all straining to make them out, wishing we could figure out what they all still knew that we’d forgotten; how to talk to one another.

“What we need is to play a show,” Henrietta said finally, bringing our eyes off the table. “They’re having a Dead Hearts Valentine’s Day show at the Black Cat next weekend. It wouldn’t be too late to get on the bill, especially for openers.”

“We haven’t practiced in—”

I was glad Henrietta cut me off because I couldn’t even tally how long it’d been.

“So what? We could practice tomorrow, and every day this week. I’m sick of this,” she motioned at the general state of all of us. None of us had to ask her what she meant.

“I’d do it.” Georgie’s blue eyes were lit up, and I could tell he was trying not to look too excited before hearing our reaction. This was probably something they’d both come up with on the car ride over. It was an intervention.

Henrietta looked like some sort of general rallying her troops, and the blueberry staining her already purple lips did nothing to detract from the certainly in her eyes. She knew which one of us she’d actually have to convince. “You still have an electric guitar Dylan. None of us have forgotten how the songs go. I want to do it, I _know_ you do too.”

“I’m in,” Ethan said to me, almost looking guilty. It was hard to see everyone looking so hopeful when their natural states were a cynical half-frown.

“Fine, whatever,” I said with as much enthusiasm as I could muster, “I could use the extra money from a gig.” It was hard to remember how to be excited for anything, when the repercussion of the let-down was still so fresh. I lit as cigarette as Henrietta pulled out her notebook to craft a set-list.

By the time we were driving home, Henrietta had called and confirmed a time with the venue, she and Ethan had put together a set-list, and Georgie had called to see if Ike could make it. I’d smoked enough cigarettes to make it hurt every time I swallowed.

Even if I wouldn’t admit it, I was glad to have to distraction. Maybe that’s what we did any of this for; go to school, have jobs, play in bands, get in fights, make up. If Ethan an I kept talking about playlists, and venues, and practice times we’d never have to talk about the way we used to hold onto one another, or the way it used to be so easy to press our foreheads together and close our eyes. Did it ever actually even happen? It was best not to wonder.

“I’m going to sleep,” Ethan said when we walked in, almost like he was asking permission for the day to be over.

“Okay,” I looked over at the clock on the microwave blinking 4AM, not realizing how close to morning it’d gotten.

“You know, Dylan,” Ethan continued, the wall of the door frame cutting off my view of half his body. “I guess what I meant to say to you today is that I’m glad you’re safe. And I’m so sorry that you weren’t.”

The door to his room was shut soundlessly leaving me with his quiet words. He’d left his coat on the sofa next to mine. I pretended it wasn’t an accident as I lay on top of it. Because it was his, and everything that was his felt noble and special and different than everything that was mine.

 


	15. Chapter Fifteen

_“Nothing happened, and nothing kept happening.”_

_—Chuck Palahniuk_

 

**x.**

 

I was road-kill splayed across Henrietta’s bed. She stubbed out a blunt into a red heart-shaped plate. The crumbs from the cookies her mom had baked were mixed in with the ash.

In a few minutes Ethan would be here. Because life was like clockwork. The minute hand was always digging into my shoulder. I was sure I could feel the indentations it left when I tried to sleep at night.

We’d been rehearsing for the show the past couple days, and meeting up at the diner afterwards. And now that everything between us was back to normal, I wondered what normal for Ethan and I really meant. Was our relationship a blimp in the radar of our friendship? Or was it a status quo that had yet to be earned back? And how was I supposed to find out. There didn’t seem to be enough time in the day to ask questions like that. We were always busy with jobs or school or eating dinner or doing the laundry or sleeping. Maybe one day I’d wake up and the answer wouldn’t matter to me anymore.

“Why are you still living with him?” Henrietta asked, her liquid eyeliner paused in a tip of the edge of her eye as she watched me in the mirror. I looked back at the ceiling where the gaze was less critical.  When I glanced back at her, her lips were pursed tightly together as she watched me bring my thumbnail to my teeth and scrape.

“We’re friends.” There was something familiar and comforting about the chemical taste of nail polish on my tongue. “Friends live together.”

“ _Yeah_ , ex’s don’t,” her voice was sharp. I couldn’t stand her attitude, so full of certainty as to how people should behave. As if she and Damien were some pinnacle of wisdom we should all be modeling our relationships after.

I sighed and rolled towards the window.

It was snowing again and when Ethan finally made came into the room snowflakes clung to his curls. I wished I was one of them.

 

**xx.**

 

The next day marched on. And everyone acted like this concert, like playing together was going to mean something, and I tried to imagine what it’d feel like if that were true. “So this going to be weird, huh?” Ethan said, as I adjusted a peg on my guitar.

His legs were stretched in front of him between the sofa and the TV. A commercial for City Wok flashed on the screen. You could barely make out his black suspenders against his collared shirt, but I tried my best to trace the outline.

“You mean because of Georgie’s shit haircut?” We’d all looked abruptly at the floor of Henrietta’s garage on Monday when Georgie walked in with a crew cut. It was part of a three-pronged effort to make Ike’s mom let him in the house. I watched Ethan’s lips curl into a half smile at the comment.

A bag of heart-shaped peppermint patties sat half-empty between us, with pink shiny wrappers blocking out the carpet. Henrietta had left it here last night after our final practice and neither of us had any interest in cleaning up after her. It felt festive, though unpleasantly pink, and I wondered if we could work the sentiment into a song or if it was too late.

Ethan was staring at the TV in a way that people did when they wanted to hide the fact that they were staring into space. That’s why they’ve plopped up in doctor’s waiting rooms and restaurants. We’re not allowed to be lost in thought; we have to be lost in the Big Game.

“Want me to make food?” he said finally.

I shrugged and watched him get up from the couch and pad across the room in his socks. It still felt too intimate, these everyday moments, weighed with the tension of what neither of us would say.

“Yeah, whatever. Whatever you want to make.” I pushed back into the couch cushions, my guitar resting flat on my knees. “Do you think Henrietta and Damien will have a great Valentine’s Day reconciliation?” I don’t know why I even said it. I’d listened to Henrietta go on an hour-long tirade, giving me a play-by-play of their last bitter conversations. I wasn’t looking for Ethan’s opinion or speculation. We just had nothing else to talk about expect other people. 

“It would be a Valentine’s Day miracle,” he sneered, wrinkling his nose over a dented box of Minute Rice.

It was hard not to wonder what he and I would be doing right now if we were still together. Not that I could imagine it’d be anything like I overheard Craig Tucker talking about in the locker room today at school. Most couples were going to the Olive Garden.

Student Council had sold roses, like they did every year. One year Henrietta had suggested we get to school early and spray paint them all black. We’d spent hours over coffee working out every detail, but it was ultimately something that required all of us waking up before the last possible minute, and it remained a pipe-dream that died when Ethan graduated.

 

**xxx.**

 

The set passed in a dream of Georgie’s sneaker slapping against the drum pedal, Ethan’s fingers pushing his curls off his forehead, the red stage lights reflecting off the thick metal rings around his fingers, and the smoke curling in cursive letters from Henrietta’s cigarette holder. The crowd hadn’t thinned out by eleven as I’d cynically predicted when we’d walked in, and I was glad.

“It’s cool you could come,” I mumbled to Mike, as he followed me out to Henrietta’s car, barely able to lift my amp above the black cement. I hadn’t invited him, he’d just been there, creating a five foot section of the crowd that Ethan refused to acknowledge.

The closest the bar had come to decorating for Valentine’s Day was the plethora of cherry-flavored drinks the bartender had on tap tonight. I was surprised to see the black cherry vodka being swirled in Mike’s hand as he’d waved to me when we finished our set.  

“It is nice to get out on Valentine’s Day. Even if it is a school night,” he said, struggling to push the amp into the trunk.

“Mike,” I lit a cigarette in a cuffed hand, “you graduated last year.”

He was looking around, not listening to me at all; his hair kept blowing against opposite cheeks with every movement. I slammed the trunk of the car shut.

“Listen, I need to talk to you Dylan,” he said.

“We’re talking,” I started to turn back to the club. Ethan had ordered us a pizza from the bar. It was something the bartender pulled out of the freezer and threw into a microwave oven, but I would eat anything after a show. Mike kept standing on the curb and I considered the idea that he’d had more to drink than I’d realized.

“You know the show my band played two weekends ago?” he said quietly at first, so that I had to walk back two steps to make out his words. My footprints were barely visible in the powdery snow that had fallen earlier.

“I guess?” In the dark the space between the green in his hair and the black was lost, and indistinguishable as his expression.

“A girl in the front row was recording it and uploaded the whole thing to YouTube.”

“That’s really cool Mike,” I said slowly and impatiently.

“It’s got so many views that it caught the attention of a record label in New York City called Yellow Light.” I watched him look at me, making sure I was catching the significance. “We have a record deal,” he finished.

I tried to swallow then, I think, but all of me had dried up. Maybe I was waiting then for him to laugh and acknowledge the sick joke he was playing. But Mike wouldn’t make a joke as cruel as that, he never really joked about anything at all.

“Dylan, I’m telling you—“

“A record deal doing what?” I asked. Maybe Mike misunderstood them. Maybe they needed some young trendy looking guys to hand out flyers or go for coffee runs. Mike watched the butt of my cigarette burn out in the snow.

“To record an album, but I’m telling you this—”

“Right, because of the views you had on a video? If I’d known this was all a fucking popularity contest I wouldn’t have bothered.”  

“That’s really an oversimplification, per say” Mike snapped.

“Is it though?” I spun my heel. Somewhere in my brain the best of me was urgently warning me about the importance of being happy for this person who had, for all intents and purposes, been my best friend these past few months. But I couldn’t muster up the energy required for the kind of performance that would be necessary to convince Mike that I had anything but contempt for him, his success, and the world in general. The best I could do was to walk back into the club and pretend this conversation had only taken place in a very perverse dream.

“Will you just wait,” he grabbed my arm. “I want you to be my guitarist for the album, and whatever else comes after.” His words were all bleeding together quickly, and he took a long breath after he was done, as if steadying himself for whatever protest I was about to make. I didn’t care.

“I think we both know what my answer is. I have too much integrity to ride your coat-tails to a record label that seems fixated on the fact that teenage girls swoon at the flick of your hair. I’m not some pretty boy who can back your vocals about dreams and hot cocoa and puppy love. I’m fucking _goth_. So no Mike, I don’t want to join your boy band.”

“What are you talking about? _My coat-tails_? Dylan, the music we were playing was yours! You wrote every note! The only difference is it’ll actually be played the way it’s supposed to be, and not by me fumbling my fingers over my strings.” Mike took a breath and grabbed his gloves from his pockets. He kept trying to jam his fingers in too quick to get it right and I looked away. “I’m going to try and be patient here and realize you’re a little shocked that something good can happen in the world because I realize you’ve been having a really awful time of things lately. But I’m not going to be talked to this way.” He wasn’t yelling.  He was exasperated but in some level-headed way that most people probably needed years of therapy and books about Buddhism to achieve.

He took a step away from me and sighed. “I want you in the band for this album. There’s a lot of money involved. A lot of opportunity. And I think you can help us achieve more. So you think about it. Calm down and really think about it and call me tomorrow.”

“My answer is no!” I shouted after him as he started walking towards his car. “For-fucking-get about it!”

But he just waved his hand through the air without looking at me, like he refused to hear me. I wished he would have slammed the door to his car. Something, _anything_ that would have let me know I’d upset him. But he was still calm. It was probably all the tea he drank. I thought about that, and how he would never order coffee at diners, and decided definitively that things could never work out.

“Well that was stupid,” Ethan said, his boot propped against the dashboard of Henrietta’s car as he sucked at his cigarette. The door was hanging open widely over the curb. I don’t know how neither of us hadn’t noticed. It wasn’t like Ethan was trying to hide. I felt my cheeks heat with the embarrassment of having been scrutinized without knowing I was under the microscope.

“What do you expect, it’s Mike Makowski.” I muttered, trying not to act caught off-guard by Ethan’s presence. I kicked a foot at the curb and tried to keep my hair over my face.

“No, you. Why would you turn down that opportunity?” I stared at him for a minute to make sure I was really seeing him properly, really hearing him. Sometimes Ethan’s sarcasm was almost too indiscernible and I had to wait for the edges of his lips to quirk up to understand his true meaning. But he was just frowning at me now.

“Well, you were eavesdropping. So you should have heard my reasons. What more do you want me to say?” I felt my shoulders hunch around my ears. I thought Ethan would have understood why I wouldn’t sell out for Mike’s band. I wasn’t some musical charity case. And besides, I had a band. We had a band. Did it still all count for nothing?

“Your music was given an audience to one of the top record companies on the East Coast and they liked it so much they’re signing the band that so sloppily played it. And the frontman of that band wants you to sign the contract and produce the album with them. And you’re turning it down why?” I felt the edges of my mouth turn down further into my face, like a marionette doll. I didn’t know how I was always so many steps behind Ethan. So out of sync.

“That’s not the fucking point Ethan. You’re twisting it to make it sound like I’m unreasonable. You know it isn’t like that.”

“Twisting it how? Because I’m just reviewing the facts. You’re the one acting like a child who is just upset that their favorite present was given to them the day after Christmas.” It hurt, to know how little Ethan thought of me, even now.

“What the fuck is that even supposed to mean?  You fucking hate Mike Makowski. So if you don’t want to be on my side about this, then you can just fuck off too.”

Ethan laughed and stood up, “You can’t throw the word “fuck” around enough times to scare me away.”

“Whatever,” I mumbled, sitting down on the curb. I felt every inch the child Ethan claimed I was acting like. I imagined my bottom lip would stick out if I let it. “First you don’t like how dedicated I am; how much I’m willing to work for it. Now you think I should follow any dickhead that promises me a record contract?”

Ethan just shrugged, “It’s not like it’d be forever.”

We both watched a car go past and tried to think of what to say next.

“Won’t you care?” I said, at least having the dignity to leave out the unspoken _‘if I go.’_ When he didn’t immediately respond I panicked, and needed to fill up the air with more words. If I couldn’t get an answer from Ethan, at least I could make accusations. “If I have to leave. The only difference between now and then is that you want to get rid of me.”

Ethan sucked at his cigarette and flicked it into the street. It bounced once and disappeared under the bumper of Henrietta’s car.

“The truth is, we’re all losers as long as we’re trapped in South Park. Someone’s left the door the cage open for you, you know?”

“Great, thanks for the talk,” I mumbled, my hands pressed flat against the curb to push up. His hand grabbed my wrist and forced me to look at him.

“Hey, don’t you think that I wish it was different? Don’t you think that I wished it would be us?”

“I don’t know Ethan.” I really didn’t, and nothing about this conversation had convinced me one way or the other how he felt.

“Of course want it to be us.” He drug his fingers through his hair. “Maybe it still can be, I don’t know. But I just feel like if you ever wanted that at all, you’d take this chance now.”

“What about us?” I said, angry that it was me that had to finally bring it up.

“We’re friends.” Ethan shook his head. “If we want to be more than that again, I think we both need time.”

“Okay,” I said, standing up. It was such a cliché, meaningless thing to say that I could have laughed in his face.

“Where are you going?”

“I want to eat something, fuck, is that a crime?” I asked, saying it all under my breath as I headed back to the club.

The closer I got to the club the lighter I felt. From the doorway I could see Henrietta sitting in Damien’s lap, smacking his hand traveling up her thigh under the table. The blue light from Georgie’s phone illuminated his face. He reached up to swipe the bangs out of his eyes that had been cut away days ago, his hand stopped mid-air and rested back on the table. There was an empty chair between them for me.

I wondered what time could change about all of us and what it had already. Ethan was still outside, still true and right and better than me in everything he said and felt. I was beginning to think that that counted for less than it should.

Mike wasn’t even home yet when I called him.

Sometime later sitting in a studio beside him, as we signed our names to contracts we didn’t understand, and weren’t expected to, I tried to think of what I missed. But it’s hard to miss things that your mind knew were over and gone but your body didn’t. South Park was a phantom limb, and Georgie, Henrietta, and Ethan were the wrist, palm, and fingers. If somebody asked me, even though no one ever would, if I wanted to go home now—I wouldn’t know what to say.

**/x.**

 

_At what point in our lives do we stop blurring? When do we become crisp individuals? What must we do in order to end these fuzzy identities—to clarify just who it is we really are?_

_—Douglas Coupland_

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this story please consider [buying this goth kid a coffee.](https://ko-fi.com/A402111U)


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